LOST CREEK -- Lucas Bolyard is one of five students at South Harrison High School searching hundreds of hours of data collected from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County.

Bolyard has sifted through more than six thousand pulsar graphs since he was certified to search.

A pulsar is a highly magnetized star. The Green Bank Telescope underwent repairs recently, and collected more than 30 terabytes of data on pulsars in just one part of the sky. (A terabyte equals one trillion bytes of information.)

Astrophysicists alloted a large part of this data to the Pulsar Search Collaboratory - a project that allows high schoo students to grade the data to see what they can find.

"This spring I was looking through data online of the Green Bank Telescope," recalled Bolyard, "And I found something that looked like it might be a pulsar."

Bolyard's pulsar is unique, because it turns on and off. "We never saw it again and it's very hard to see," he explained.

His teacher, who trained for more than a month to offer the program, says she lets the students use their own judgment.

"I don't look over their shoulders," said science teacher Mindy Larew. "I don't tell them, you should have scored it better when they're rating these graphs and plots."

He waited four long months until his discovery was verified in July by astrophysicists at WVU and Green Bank.

"Of course it's exciting," he admitted. "I mean, it's something completely new."

As if that weren't exciting enough, Bolyard got a call from the White House last week.

"They called me and told me I was invited to a Star Party at the White House." There he had the chance to stargaze on the White House Lawn with President Barack Obama. "He basically told me how big of an accomplishment it was and how it might motivate other kids to possibly get into a science field," Bolyard explained.

A field that Bolyard now dreams about.>