My day actually started at 00:00, because I am so incredibly fortunate to have the late shift for observation! All jokes aside, observation was actually super fun—I got to see stars I never knew existed in the night sky and operate a huge telescope. Plus, the red lights on the deck are honestly kind of aesthetic. Time flew by! It felt like we clicked some buttons, and suddenly we had really cool pictures and it was 1am. After observation, I went back to my dorm and almost immediately passed out in bed.
The next morning, my roommate Elyse and I woke up to our 7:30 alarm, turned it off, and layed in bed for 15 more minutes. We started our day with a breakfast that I don’t even remember anymore, and headed to morning lecture where Dr. F taught us about photometry. All of the astronomy related lectures have been a tad bit overwhelming for me, but in a good way. Before coming to SSP, I barely knew what the North Star was, and so everything I’ve learned has been completely new and awesome (just like Leo). After lecture, we headed to the computer lab where we tried looking for our asteroid in the images we took the night before, but with little success :(. Hopefully after some image processing we’ll be able to see our beloved 1998 RO4. The highlight of the morning was definitely when we took a stretch break and Dr. F told us to show off our moonwalks. My attempt was unsuccessful but we definitely have a couple of moon-walkers in the bunch!
After lunch, we got on an actual yellow school bus and headed to the National Center for Atmosphere Research. At the museum we saw artificial tornados and clouds, and we randomly walked into a lecture hall where Ben gave us a perspicacious lecture on the reason the screen was not a blackboard. He then informed us, to our dismay, that we had a final that friday. There were hiking trails around the museum, which most people went on, but I opted to stay in the air-conditioned museum where I played cards with other non-hikers. After we came back, we had dinner and I sat at my table with Dr. F. Our dinner table always has the most interesting conversations, so dinner is usually very enjoyable—and entertaining. The rest of my night was filled with around 6 hours of psetting! I got quite a bit done, so I would call it a super successful studious Saturday.
Museum:
Fake cloud:
Moonwalking:
observation:
psetting:
Hey everyone! I’m Sophia, and I’m from San Diego, California. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music, golfing, and eating delicious food. In planning on studying aerospace engineering or applied math in college, and I’m so excited to be surrounded by people with similar interests!
