NMSU Astro II: Day 31
Today is Friday the 26th and it’s crazy to think there’s only 5 days left of SSP. My morning began with me waking up at 7 a.m. to go on a run before breakfast and morning lecture. Me and Jalen (my roommate) ended up almost missing out on breakfast because he didn’t wake up until 8:40 and I had fallen back asleep after returning from my run. After rushing to the dining hall to grab the basic necessity of survival here (morning coffee or tea) we made it to the lecture with a nice 3 minutes to spare.
Our first lecture was very different today; to celebrate the end of the program we had a mini conference where all the participants that wanted to were able to present on any topic they enjoy. This allowed for everyone to share their passions while also gaining important presentation skills and experience in a conference like environment. Projects ranged from research trying to measure small scale gravity using optical lasers to Jalen’s where he analyzed the physics in My Little Pony.
After this we headed to lunch at the dining hall to refuel on caffeine and have our first actual meal of the day. The lunch consisted of some very good Pulled Pork Sliders and was just what we needed to prepare for the afternoon lecture.
This afternoon’s lecture was quite sad as it was our final one of SSP. First we heard from one of our TA’s, Maddie, who discussed research on handedness. Then for the rest of the lecture Dr. F presented his research that he has done throughout undergrad and grad school as well as giving us some words of wisdom and reassurances about our future. He’s taught us so much over these past 5 weeks and I can’t thank him enough for everything he has done for us throughout the program.
After an amazing dinner of fish and pasta we headed back to the Pset room where all the magic happens. Tonight we were tasked with finding the orbital elements of our asteroid in order to fully describe the orbit of our asteroid. It may have taken 6 hours and tons of trial and error but in the end my group was able to generate all 6 of the elements and are excited to start writing our final paper tomorrow!
In the end, SSP has truly been a life changing experience for me as not only have I learned so much I’ve made so many new friends that I’ll have forever. While some of the knowledge I’ve gained over these last 5 weeks will be quickly forgotten, so many of the relationships I’ve forged will last forever. It was so exciting to see everything come together at the end of the OD code and to have it give back the orbital elements of our asteroid was an amazing feeling even if MOG gave back some weird data at times. Overall SSP was more than just the Educational Experience of a lifetime, it’s truly been the experience of a lifetime.
-JP McAnally