NMSU Astro Blog – Day 30

Hi! We’re starting our final week here at NMSU, and things are certainly ramping up.

By this point, we’re through with lectures centered around the work we’re doing with our asteroids. Instead, the professors have been teaching us about interesting topics of their choice. Today, it was a lecture on quantum physics by Dr. A, and The Long Term Fate of the Universe with Dr. R. It’s all very cool, but hard to wrap my head around.

Our MoG code is due today. It feels strange that we’ve reached the point of writing our MoG codes, let alone turning them in. MoG has been a mythical thing that we’ve been hearing about since day 1, and now we know enough to actually do it! In fact, the code itself wasn’t very challenging at all to set up. Debugging, on the other hand…

Anyway, now all that’s really left to do is write and submit our reports.

The weather’s been very strange the past week. We had a moment there in the middle of the program where it wasn’t so hot or humid. It wasn’t great for observing, but it was so nice otherwise. Lately, we’ve been having heavy thunderstorms. Twice last week I got an alert in my phone warning me of dust storms, and we could see them through the windows of Dominici! Last night, I could see the lightning flashing from my dorm window. It was really bright, and went on for a few hours. Honestly, the storms have been pretty cool to see, but it’s so humid now. Makes the walk from lecture to lunch/dinner to lecture a lot more taxing.

While walking back to Dominici after dinner, I saw this gathering of birds. They were all looking at the sky (thunderclouds), and stood completely motionless. They looked like they were holding a serious meeting, or maybe a ritual. It was a fun thing to encounter before hunkering down to work for the night. I have to say, the birds at NMSU are fearless. You have to watch where you step while walking the paths because the birds won’t avoid you. They own this place, and we must bow to their authority. It makes them very entertaining to watch, because they’ll explore everything. Yesterday I saw two little birds fight for a single perch. When one moved to a different branch, the other would follow. They were still at it 5-10 minutes later when I had to move on. It’s the little things.