At the start of the program, when I was told I was going to be writing the blog for July 8, I thought July 8 would start in the morning, when the Earth at Chapel Hill turns to meet the Sun. But at SSP, the day changes when we are wide awake. I fell asleep at around 1:30 am, once my bed stopped creaking. Six hours later, I was crawling to the shower, and after getting dressed I went back to bed until the walk to the morning lecture at 9 am. Since we’re nearing the end of the program (time flies), we had a workshop session instead of the usual lecture: precious time to work on our Orbit Determination code which we have all been grappling with for the past weeks. I made some progress, but it was lunch before long, which meant a long walk to Chase Dining Hall for a quick bite before heading back for an even quicker nap.
Afternoon lecture was at 1:30 pm, and this one was especially interesting. We discussed galaxies – how they form, how they merge, and how we discovered them in the first place. Dr. Z kept us engaged the entire time and the cup of coffee I had during the break didn’t hurt either. After the lecture, we got dressed up for dinner and then had some good conversations about the pursuit of knowledge over chicken and rice. After dinner, it was coding time and I worked up on finishing the OD code and running it for my group’s asteroid.
Finally, the day ended with half an hour of a Hindi movie in the lounge with friends. Overall, a pretty normal day at SSP and a pretty normal night – hard to make out when one ends, and when one begins.
-Rain
