CUB Astro Day 20

Today was the first day in a while that the temperature in Boulder stayed around 80 degrees. After my roomate Sophia and I ate some of our newly bought snacks, we walked down to Sommers-Bausch Observatory for morning lecture.

Dr. F taught our last and arguably most important lesson yet on the Gaussian method of orbit determination, giving us the tools we need to complete our final research project.

I got lost a lot throughout the lecture but, thanks to the support of Koen, Hooker, Osric, and everyone else I asked for help, I was able to keep up as much as possible. SSP is truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, but people like them are what give me the ability to succeed.

After lecture we went to lunch and then back to SBO to work on image reduction. Sophia, Reema, and I also spent some time doing our own survey. We worked for a while, took a quick nap, and headed to dinner.

Post-dinner we all attended “fundatory” movie night and spent some time decompressing after an eventful and work-filled week. The mandatory relaxation was nice, and I felt good slowing down and pausing work for a bit.

Despite that, right after was straight back to calibrating. Luckily, my amazing team, Jaeuk and Gracelyn, made the process pretty bearable. We also got to talk to some SSP people from the Knox campus because we were doing a parallax experiment, which was very fun.

My night ended with the 12pm walk back to the dorms and finally getting ready to sleep. It’s sad to think tomorrow is week four, and two weeks from now we all have to say goodbye. But for now I’m so incredibly grateful to be here and very excited for what we will do next.

Sincerely,
Penelope

Penelope

Penelope

SSP Participant

Hi! My name is Penelope and I’m from Los Angeles, California. I enjoy going to the beach, cooking, and scrapbooking. I also love doing practically anything if I’m doing it with friends.