After pausing on the data analysis for our n-body simulations—programs that analyze how our asteroids will move through the solar system over millions of years—we left our code to run overnight and headed back to the dorms. Until curfew, we stayed in the dorm lobby chatting with TAs, watching Spider-Man, and playing cards.

Then, I went back to my dorm and packed a bit before heading to sleep.

A very, very short 5 hour nap later, the 29th officially started with the walk to Corbett and a penultimate breakfast at the high table. (The high table: the one long table in the dining hall. Meant to fit 18, but capable of hosting 22.) Breakfast was interspersed with some last minute talent show prep—poem and Taylor Swift parody writing.

Next up was a short lecture in Domenici, and then back to the Bio Annex for data analysis and slideshow making. Most of my time was spent making a few more animations, and of course, adding color palettes to my graphs (colorsys for the win).

Unfortunately, while trying to make a gif, a suspicious interface was downloaded onto my computer. After the subsequent half an hour of trying to get my computer to open a browser other than Yahoo, I was returned to Google Chrome (thanks, Jalen)!

Because of the exciting Yahoo virus encounter, I had to rush a bit to add my graph to my group’s slideshow. However, with some serious teamwork, we completed our final graphs, broke for lunch, and came back to practice before each group presented. Of course, there was a brief break for more talent show rehearsal between trial slide show runs. (We successfully memorized approximately ten percent of the parody we were singing.)

The main academic event of the day was our presentations, where each group gave a rundown of their asteroid’s eventual fate. For 2012 FN62, we found ejection from the solar system to be the most likely outcome. Of course, there were the 8 out of 156 test clones that plummeted into the sun instead—as everyone found slightly humorous, I found those cases a lot more fun. Each group had only five minutes, so there was a lot of data to run through quite fast.

12 successful presentations later, we headed back to Domenici for a last SWRI lecture before card games and the final dinner at Taos. One last table of students and faculty (although no assigned seats today) and one last set of announcements from Dr. F; it was quite bittersweet.

After dinner, we returned to the dorms, where I still had to finish my poem before the talent show an hour later. Luckily, the poem was successfully written, and everyone made it to Science Hall on time.

The talent show, of course, was one of our final SSP traditions; a perfect cap on a day strangely full of lasts. There were many amazing student (and faculty) performances, from music to paper-tower-building, rock stacking, poem reading, paper-airplane folding, or card tricks. Somehow, the three hours of talents passed very quickly, and by the end of Harry and Ze’s amazing Minecraft-esque final poem, it was already 10 PM (early by SSP standards, I know).

We took one final nighttime walk back from the Bio Annex, and all headed up to the third floor. In an idea that originated somewhere back in week 3, Samantha and Steinnun did my makeup outside of the game room, which led to much giggling (but luckily negligible eye poking). After a few photos, we ventured down to the remains of a soccer game and then recruited a few more people to head out to our dorm lawn and stargaze.

Stargazing was super cool; we saw several meteors (and got bitten by several mosquitos), but mostly just spent a while chatting. By the time we headed back into the dorms, there was just enough time left before curfew for one final game of fish. (Fish: some people have cult movies. SSPers have cult card games.) With a few minutes to spare before curfew, we headed to bed for the second to last time at SSP.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 34 first appeared on SSP International.

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

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 31 first appeared on SSP International.

My eyes flinch at the sun’s rays — my roommate Ze and I keep the blinds closed in our room, creating an environment of darkness . I jump down the stairs five at a time and fling the door of Pinon Hall open. I start walking quickly through the grass. Up ahead, I see visitors. It seems that the students have arrived at campus for their school year. I have complete indifference towards them. I begin my walk towards the Biology Annex.

I get around 100 feet from the Corbett Student Center when I check my phone: 8:53. I sigh to myself, realizing my foolish mistake. I begin my jog to the class, which I oddly enjoy. I get to the Biology Annex with time to spare before our morning lecture. I set my stuff down and slump into my seat. I look around the room and see a sea of masks. I sigh and collect one from the front of the room.

The staff gave lectures on their interests and fields from 9:00 to 12:00. Dr. Hawes talked about her biophysics PhD, which was more biology than physics. Taylor discussed linguistics, and Mateo and I were able to make fun “mmmm”s and “aahh”s with our mouths. Marcus gave a talk on aerospace engineering; I noticed he shaved his mustache, which few were a fan of.

The participants arrived at lunch and there was a mass of students. The lines nearly tripled, so I just jumped in the burger line. It’s quick, and I got enough meat to satisfy my hunger. I sat down with Angelo, Ze, and Harry. We discussed the upcoming participant talks. I am secretly excited for them, but I try not to let anyone else know my true feelings.

The class convenes at 1:00 and the participant talks begin. The staff connected a Zoom call for Yuen Kai, who got COVID-19. I bet he had fun watching it from his quarantine room, cozy in his bed. My happiness for him has no end. My favorite presentations were: Sarah, who talked about self-improvement; Mateo, who discussed a computer virus and how to combat it; and JP, who talked about the effect of “momentum” in NFL games.

After we finished presentations, we wrote letters to SSP donors. I wrote my letter describing how SSP has changed my interests and the great experience it’s given me. After that, I walk to my dorm and crash on the bed. I wake at 4:55 and decide to take a shower, shampooing my hair. I put on my favorite polo with khakis. I look in the mirror and feel joyful. I exit my room and walk to dinner.

The dining hall served sloppy joes tonight. I ate with Angelo, Mateo, and Nathan. We discussed the nature of spacetime, one of my deeper dinner conversations. We finish up, head back to dorms, and get back to the classroom for announcements.

After, I finished up my presentation and went over it with Dr. D for accuracy. I have to present tomorrow, so I have been trying to make sure I know what I’m talking about. Once that was done, I called my parents outside as the sun set over the buildings. I talk to them and get homesick. They start telling me what we’re going to do once I fly back. I feel lighter and say bye to them. I checked the time and an hour passed. I feel a little stupid for taking so long, but some things are worth more than time.

Marcus pulls me aside once I get back in the classroom for my talent show emcee interview. At the end, he starts walking backwards into the dark of the parking lot, saying he was “gaining arra” (he can’t pronounce the word properly). I laugh as I walk back in, masking my pity. A few minutes later, Parnika and I are announced as the talent show emcees. I’m confident we will do a great job.

My group put together our MPC data and submitted it. We then chose out the ring nebula for our color imaging. We had a little trouble with our LCO submissions but Dr. F showed us that we were supposed to do three separate requests. This is because we need to get red, green, and blue for our image, which requires three different filters on the telescopes.

So, here I am, writing my blog post at 11:27 in the night. My eyes are dropping and my attention has entirely faded away. Everyone else is hard at work, but I am not here. Nevertheless, I put on my headphones and type away.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 30 first appeared on SSP International.

After a break for lunch, we had another lecture about the long term fate of the universe. It was admittedly depressing to discuss whether the universe would end with a crunch or a freeze, but also somewhat comforting to be working with timescales well beyond ten to the power of twenty years out.

Once our lectures were complete, it was time to start the week-long crunch to complete our Method of Gauss code, astrometry, photometry, and Minor Planet Center report. A great deal of us stayed in the computer lab past midnight working on our illusive MoG code.  While this may not sound like a whole lot of fun, much like our walk back to the dorms in the rain at 1:00 am, the support and laughter of a great group of people made every moment of it enjoyable.

I’m Sean, a rising senior from Long Island, New York. My primary academic interest is engineering, although I also enjoy physics and astronomy. In my free time I enjoy working out, playing tennis, and biking with friends.

The post The Beginning of the End first appeared on SSP International.

Due to the possibility of starting an SSP pandemic, we are all masked up and socially distanced. I’m pretty sure that the antibiotic-resistant bacteria-growing genomics people have something to do with this (I’m just kidding). Other than giving us a nice throwback to how things used to be, the coronavirus also canceled our field trip to the caverns This meant I set up an alarm for 7 am but ended up waking up at 11:30!

Some participants were diligent enough to wake up before 9:25 to catch the bus for a luxurious one-hour Target trip (a true luxury compared to the rather fast-paced trip to Walmart from last week). Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any significant purchases made on that trip, but I know people were trying on some pretty shoes there, and it seems like they had a blast.

Because of the canceled trip, today was pretty chill. It was like having a gigantic sleepover with 42 people, and we even got to be in the large theater in the Dominici building. We had all sorts of snacks and fruits that were requested yesterday, although the loss of instant ramen and bubble tea was very apparent on the table.

I don’t understand Inho’s obsession with Fanta, but he seemed very happy, so I was happy for him.

(Image credit to Inho)

Despite traumatizing memories of it from when I was ten, Interstellar was a good movie, and we enjoyed our time. Half the people were bawling their eyes out and the other half were analyzing the exaggerations that were made about scientific facts. I enjoyed the true American experience eating choc-chip cookies with way too much sugar.

Since we were supposed to be on the field trip, we got a special dinner! I couldn’t identify the difference between them and the pizzas in the dining hall, but according to Jacqueline, they are so much better. We all sat around and discussed weird ways people eat pizza. My personal favorite was Jalen, who allegedly eats his pizza upside down with the toppings on the bottom.

After a day full of movies, we’re once again back in the classroom, working on our final orbital determination code and reports.

As always, Eric is grinding on the assignments and will probably be done in a few minutes. The future of the Earth looks very promising with all these hard-working people. We sure are on track to understanding and manipulating fifth dimensional space!

If anyone happens to be on the NMSU campus, they could get some of our leftover pizza, which does look very appetizing.

I’m really excited to hear about all the interesting things my fellow colleagues are preparing for the participant talks tomorrow. On a different note, I have to go back to contributing to my team. All in all, I wish everyone a great rest of the week! I hope you have as much fun as we are having with this whiteboard chess game!

– Erin Burm

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 29 first appeared on SSP International.

After the guest speaker’s lecture on modeling the Sun’s interior using sound waves interpreted through light, we learned that SSP unfortunately has had a single Covid case among its participants. Immediately afterwards, a lot of protocols went into place. We are now required to wear masks, and all the dorms, workspaces, and cafeteria were disinfected. The guest speaker reception and tomorrow’s full day field trip (due to concerns from the bus company) were canceled, and we are encouraged to spread out during meal times instead of clustering into assigned tables.

Of course, a lot of students were disappointed at the cancellation of the field trip, which was planned to last all day and take us caving and potentially stargazing. Fortunately, instead of replacing the trip with a day of lectures, we get to watch movies with snacks requested by the students and get a special dinner. Safety is obviously the primary concern, and the Covid protocols will be in place for the foreseeable future. We will continue moving forward together towards our final reports, as we did today working on finalizing our Method of Gauss code to generate our asteroid’s orbital elements from measured values of right ascension and declination at different times. It’s amazing to be able to implement the math and concepts we covered in lectures from weeks ago in an intricate and functional process.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 28 first appeared on SSP International.

Hi guys, Inho here. Only 1 day until it’s been officially one month since we’ve been attending SSP here at NMSU, but I’ll let the person tomorrow handle that talk or whatever. Today was interesting day.

My wakeup schedule has gone from 6:45 to 7:00 to 7:15 then to 7:30 and now 8:00. But today I took control of destiny, and I woke up at 7:40 so I can do some work

Today breakfast was a good one. I ate the good water and some other stuff, I think. Then I headed to the classroom.

I got there at like 8:15 or something. Only Michelle and Harry and Eric and Dr. R was there. I worked on my final code for the orbital determination of my asteroid, 1660 Wood.

Today in class the lecture was on if there are aliens out there in the universe, which so basically E.T. There were many interesting discussions going on.

Very very unfortunately like yay minutes after lecture started FIRE ALARM start . Anyways, I started running, as in walking. So I was walking out, to check out the situation. There was an error, but no fire.

We went back to the lecture. Very interesting lecture, as I said. What I got out of it I think is that the aliens are scared of us, or something, or that aliens are already in our government, or something. Very cool, very cool.

If there is a lecture, there is of course lunch. We had pasta bake. Pasta usually isn’t baked so I was intrigued. I had it; it was fine. Then at lunch I found a ketchup bottle. Dmitrii also found it. We didn’t use it, but the other Dmitry did. Fire.

Today’s second lecture was also quite the topic. Without getting too much into the specifics, what we learned is we are all going to die alone, sad, and cold. Very cool!

Later today I worked on some code. Finally finished OD code, and also managed to decrypt some ancient alien language, and also managed to send some to the aliens as well, the message which can be seen in the picture.

Well I helped out some other fellow humans with other stuff. I got a presentation I gotta work on tomorrow so gotta get that good early night sleep. Okay so all work good and now time for good good rest.

UPDATE::!!!!

NEVERMIND IT IS RAINING A LOT A LOT. IT IS 11 AND RAIN WILL CONTINUE NEXT 2 HOURS!!!
WE MADE EXECUTIVE DECISION TO RUN THROUGH THE RAIN!!!!!

MY UMBRELLA IS BROKEN, MATEO IS USING A TRASH BAG AS UMBRELLA, ERIC IS RUNNING WITH NO SHOES.

RAIN PROTECTION TURNS OUT IS USELESS. WE ARE ALL GIVING UP ON STAYING DRY. GOAL IS TO GET OUT OF RAIN AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. A YT VIDEO SAID RUNNING IS RAIN IS BETTER THAN WALKING IN RAIN, SO WE RUN RUN!!!!

I DON’T KNOW HOW THE NMSU SIDEWALKS WORK BUT THERE IS LITERALLY THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FORMING. ALL OF OUR SHOES ARE WET. WET SHOES ARE NOT GOOD.

THIS BLOG POST WAS DUE 15 MINUTES AGO. WE ARE AT HOME BASE AT PIÑON HALL AND SAFE. IT IS STILL RAINING. MOST OF US MADE IT OUT ALIVE, BUT WE ARE ALL WET. I AM GOING TO SHOWER AND TAKE A NICE SLEEP. ALL I CAN SAY IS GOOD LUCK TO THOSE STILL STUCK IN THE CLASSROOM.

Before:

After:

….

Hello this is Inho. I’ve lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for like my whole life, so not much is going on in my life. You can find me either sleeping, playing video games, or watching anime (Frieren the GOAT). I also program, but only in C++. We don’t talk about Python… nor NumPy…

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 27 first appeared on SSP International.

So that was it.

It was the end of another week.

4 weeks earlier, almost a month ago, I woke up sleep deprived, then proceeded to hop onto my 5am flight, excited yet nervous, yet really looking forward to see what it’s like to live and learn with 35 brilliant colleagues.

4 weeks later, I woke up sleep deprived, then proceeded to realize it’s been 4 weeks since I’ve landed in this land of desert known as New Mexico, struggled yet laughed, and that it’s my turn to reflect on the experience through my blog post today.

Today, after I’ve managed to crawl out of my bed, I did my laundry. Ever since the Great Laundry Machine Theft and their recent return, we have been able to use them for free, without swiping our cards…even though there is card-swiping device on the machines. This might have been a major oversight, but [shrug]. Also, before the theft, there was only one functioning washing machine on our floor, but now all 4 works. So I guess something good came out of that week of cloth-rationing after all.

I ate some food I stole borrowed took from the dining hall last night, folded my clothes, and got started on this blog post.

After lunch, I went to the Bio Annex to work a bit on my OD code, but instead got distracted by Dr. R talking about his undergrad experience of studying abroad in France, and we ended up talking about how lucky young people are to still be able to pull all-nighters. As I am writing this post extremely tired at 11:30pm, I am extremely skeptical of my capability of doing so…

After the last swing dancing class of SSP, a bunch of us gathered to play the best best card game I have played: fish. Credit goes to my friend Yulian for introducing me to this game at SSP. Basically, each suite is divided into two to form a total of 8 half-sets. Participants are divided into 2 teams, and cards are distributed among all participants. The gameplay consists of members from each team asking members of the other team for cards, but only from a half-set that each member has cards in with the goal of making their team end up with complete half-sets. The twist is that everything is done without any communication, and in order to own a half-set, a person must know who in their team has which cards of the half-set. So, it really tests the memory skills of participants and has incredible strategic potential.

After dinner, we got together with Astro 1 to see the movie Hidden Figures. It was incredibly exciting to see bits of math we learned at SSP making their cameo in the movie, such as polar equation of ellipse and Euler’s method. It also contains Kennedy’s famous “we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard” quote, which I personally usually interpret as:

But the work still needs to be done. Luckily, our next Pset is very exciting, as it constitutes the ultimate step to fully determining the orbit of our asteroid. The Method Of Gauss, known popularly as MOG, allows us to go from the RA and DEC of our observations to positions and velocity vectors of our asteroid. I made some progress on the code while being tired, so they will likely contain 10000 bugs that will take 3 hours to debug, but they are good enough for now. It’s time for bed

……

Hi! I’m Harry, from a bunch of places but most recently Bellevue, Washington. I love learning new things but I’m most excited for math, physics, and programming. You can almost always find me doing FRC robotics related stuff (go NRG948!) including but not limited to coding the robot, strategizing, and bingeing matches.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 26 first appeared on SSP International.

Following lecture we had lunch, and then I headed back to my dorm to do my laundry that had been piling up for the last two weeks. I decided to throw in my sheets for good measure, which amounted to three loads. It took me an embarrassing 7 minutes to realize how the fancy new laundry machines actually worked, but I succeeded and soon enough, my clothes were clean and folded.

Following that, I went to the classroom to do some work on my SDSS report. I honestly really enjoy scientific writing – more than I expected. So writing the report was quite enjoyable for me. Of course, I took a 20 minute break to do my daily crossword as the day is never complete without it.

Soon enough it was time for dinner – which for me was bread and peanut butter since I have the tastebuds of a 5 year old. There had been plans to go play sports at about 7, however it was raining rather heavily after dinner. But the weather cleared up somewhat and the games were able to go on! After an hour of sports, we all tromped back to the bio annex to work on asteroid data processing and our SDSS projects. It’s crazy to think that we’re almost done with our research project… but we are! But tomorrow is Sunday, which means I get to sleep in and relax, and I’m definitely looking forward to that!

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 25 first appeared on SSP International.

At midnight, we were promptly kicked out of the classroom. After avoiding the cockroaches and skunks on the perilous journey back to Pinon, we finally arrived at the dorms. Since we hadn’t eaten anything since 5:30, we ate 3 granola bars each, and I witnessed a member of our cohort being tragically caught sneaking into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water for the night.

After a lengthy yap session with my suitemates and a surprising offer of flaming hot cheetos at 1am, I resolved to wake up 20 minutes earlier than usual in the morning.

In the morning, I did not successfully wake up earlier than usual. After sprinting half a mile to the Biology Annex (my daily dose of exercise), we listened to Dr. D’s lectures on stellar death and relativity. In the afternoon, Dr. F gave a brief lecture on Stellar Evolution.

After Dr. F’s lecture, we visited a rock museum on campus (Zuhl Museum). My friends and I were very impressed by the displays of fossils, geodes, and petrified wood.

A picture of us in front of a mostly-blocked petrified log, pretending to be sloths (in imitation of the petrified sloth in the museum). And the cross-section of a polished petrified pine cone!

After being unproductive in the classroom for an hour, we ate a dinner of very unhealthy nachos in our fancy supper clothes. The cafeteria was exceptionally crowded today, and our fancy, “reserved” spot in the cafeteria got stolen.

Back in the classroom, we semi-finalized our T-shirt design. We had to remove all the fancy components of our T-shirt to lower the price from $58 to $22 each, and we had to give up the fast shipping, too. Then, we semi-successfully campaigned for more people to join our T-shirt group so we could further reduce the price from $22 to $19. Afterwards, I stared at my computer screen for 5 hours trying to figure out how to do photometry on our LCO data.

My 7th unsuccessful attempt at photometry on our LCO 07-14-2024 data

Finally, I finished photometry on two of our LCO observations! Our team, Axiom, doubled the number of stickers we have on the sticker board (5 → 10)

Our sticker board! We picked the largest stickers so we could cover the neighboring teams’ stickers

Now, I am writing this blog post as Scarlet sings the Periodic Table song in the background and Dr. D talks about his future career at MIT. After my blog post, I plan to speedrun my Week #4 Reflection before we get kicked out of the classroom at midnight again.

Hi! I’m Jacqueline from NMSU Astro II, and I’m from Cupertino, California. I enjoy doing physics and math and like hiking in my free time.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 24 first appeared on SSP International.