CUB Astro Day 16

The day started at around 8:00 in the morning for the few of us who still love to eat breakfast (and are willing to get up early enough for it). The dining hall options are pretty similar everyday, so we have started to get creative. I finally was able to make avocado toast with scrambled eggs by running around to different stations to grab the ingredients.

Our first lecture by Dr. D was about error analysis, which we will apply to our orbit determination project. At the end, however, we started discussing “big numbers” and covered many mind-bending thought experiments.

After a leisurely lunch, we jumped right into our dense second lecture helping us derive the orbital elements that are essential for our orbit determinations. “Little” Omega took the longest time to find. We also had a small discussion right before dinner about mentorship and learning from others with more experience.

After dinner, we worked on our Least Squares Plate Reduction assignment, a difficult and confusing feat. In the midst of trying to finish this assignment, my team (ROC On Top) had our fifth observation, finding our very shy, very slow, and very petite asteroid (!!).

I can’t believe we are almost halfway through SSP!! I’ve met so many incredible people here, and I’m excited to see what our remaining time holds.

Toodles!!
Carter

Carter

Carter

SSP Participant

Hi! I’m Carter, and I’m from New Richmond, Wisconsin. I love hanging out with my friends, ecology, conservation, math, and learning new things.