Sonnert’s part of the work involves “looking for transiting debris disks.” That may not match the grandeur of Graur’s description, but it has thoroughly engaged Sonnert.

Debris disks are collections of dust and debris that orbit a star, and can block some of their light when passing in front. Sonnert said she combs through huge amounts of data searching for the disks; her results, she said, will help scientists determine how common, or how rare, debris disks are.

While Sonnert has yet had no tangible find, Zhou said her work is distinctly not kid stuff. It can take four hours to track an object’s transit, he pointed out.

Comets can be small objects, too hard to detect. Perhaps it’s like looking at a firefly in the vast light, Zhou explained in his analogy.

The students have the use of the Clay Telescope on the roof of the Science Center, where data can be collected. They are also provided laptops, on which they do the majority of their work.

Sonnert had to learn how to code in Python to search for the debris disks, and with it she has tallied the number of stars recorded: “I was able to see 66,000 stars,” she said. Athanasopoulos, too, had to learn the programming language, and said that has been the most challenging aspect of the mentoring program.

“I had had very little experience beforehand and I had to pick it up fairly quickly,” she said.

Athanasopoulos’ part of the work focused on “taking data from a binary star system and making/analyzing graphs of elemental lines” in order to create accurate graphs, which would help support previous findings.

She said she would recommend the mentoring program “to any student who is motivated.”

“I enjoy science a lot; however, classes at our high school tend to not be too difficult,” she said. “Being submersed in a work environment where I have to learn for myself on topics I am not very familiar with is much harder.”

Graur said the program could benefit even students with less motivation.

“Most Americans cannot name a living scientist. Moreover, scientists’ portrayal in the media is usually biased toward caricatures, such as those on the ‘Big Bang Theory,’” he said. “This turns students, especially women and people of color, away from academia. So it’s important for teenagers to meet — and work with — actual, living scientists.”

That connection is part of his mandate as an NSF Fellow, for whom the job description includes devoting some time to education and outreach. Graur worked with CRLS astronomy teacher Tal SebellShavit to interview potential students and select the 10 who were accepted, each of whom receives a $1,500 stipend from the city of Cambridge.

Graur said in addition to benefiting the CfA and the students, “For Harvard, this is a way to give back to Cambridge.

“I definitely see this as an ongoing program. My long-term goal is to expand [it] beyond astrophysics,” he said. “We like to say that astrophysics is a gateway science — it’s easy to get students excited about it.

“But for the program to truly keep going … we need a stable source of funding,” Graur explained, adding that the program has received assistance from Harvard, the CfA and its Wolbach Library, the city of Cambridge, members of Rotary Cambridge, and private individuals.

Hansen, Sonnert, and Athanasopoulos will present their projects on May 25, along with their classmates. The other projects are:

Zoe Padilla and Nick Gottschlich Hawthorne — Measuring the light curves (brightness as a function of time) of nearby, very bright supernovae in order to study their explosion mechanisms.

David Inho Lee and Mohammed Shafim — Developing a machine-learning tool to automatically reject artificial contaminants in the upcoming Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey.

William Daniels — Simulating the effects of a black hole on binary and higher-order star systems.

Vanessa Marques Pineda and Cristian Jurado — Digging for hypervelocity stars in astronomical databases.

Applications to be part of next year’s SRMP mentoring program are available online and must be submitted by 5 p.m. on May 11 deadline. For more information, contact Or Graur at or.graur@cfa.harvard.edu.

Nina Livingstone is a Boston-based writer. Contact her at nina@ninalivingstone.com or visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/destinationmirth/.