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MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) - A second eastern Kentucky high school student has made an astronomical discovery.

Jessica Pal, who is a sophomore at Rowan County High School, found a pulsar, which is a dense, rotating star. Her find last month comes about a year after another student at the same school also discovered a pulsar.

Pal and Hannah Mabry began looking for the heavenly objects when they took a space science class offered at Rowan County High School. Students in the class work with the Pulsar Search Collaborative, a project by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University.

Pal told The Independent that she was home on a snow day Jan. 13 and decided to get on her family's computer and go through data and graphs from class ( HYPERLINK "http://bit.ly/zBp21U" ). She says she began around 5:30 and looked until around midnight for visual and numerical clues.

She said she doesn't remember exactly when she spotted the signs of a pulsar, but she does remember how it made her feel.

"I just saw it and I got excited. I started jumping up and down," she said while attending a space science lab at her school.

Pal and her teacher, Jennifer Carter, took her data to the observatory, which confirmed that it was a newly discovered pulsar.

Meanwhile, Mabry's discovery led to a fellowship at the Morehead State Space Science Program, where she has been researching supernova remnants. She is also trying to build an instrument that allows a telescope to analyze data for signs of pulsars, which can be used to calibrate atomic clocks and locate other objects in space.

The space science program started several years ago when the tracking system of the observatory's radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., was damaged. While repairs were done, the telescope continued to gather so much data that high school teachers were recruited to help interpret it.

The teachers train students to help with the interpretation and scientists at the observatory double-check the work.

Carter said students who take the space science class are highly motivated because they love science and because they have the opportunity to do real research and make genuine scientific discoveries.

"They are working with real data, not just canned projects for the classroom," she said.

Pal says she is now considering a career in astronomy.

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Information from: The Independent, http://www.dailyindependent.com

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