Today felt like another typical day going to a 9 am lecture after waking up at 8:55 after missing five collective alarms between me and my roommate, Emma. Or it felt normal since we once again missed five
alarms before rushing out of bed at 8:55 am. This time it was not for a cosmic lecture or
OD code or quantum mechanics, but for the final exit survey.
We could hardly fathom that the 53-question long survey would be our last time in the
lecture space in Philips Hall, where we diligently took notes on stellar lectures on
galaxies and telescope and optics also the lecture hall; we fought sleep after lunch to
listen to as much as possible from an intriguing lecture. And wild wasps, too (yes! We
did fight wasps in the lecture hall, and we did win!). But I am happy to report we
persisted through the survey, with the delicious strawberries and blueberries we had for
breakfast (Thank you, Dr. Rosenthal!) regardless of how many times we saw the flash
message of, “the survey has been modified and has to be restarted….AGAIN!”

It was time to say the first of a series of goodbyes. This one was quite hard, personally,
after having spent hours and hours of computer lab time together laughing, crying, and
praying that the other one would not run out of battery before getting through problem
sets. The laptop from slot 30 stayed with me all through the way, the highs of letting me
play Cornfield Chase (from Interstellar) on repeat as we finished the OD report and the
lows of having 8 million tabs open with my USB drive missing in action. As I said
goodbye to #30, others said goodbye to #16, #28, and so many more.

It was a day of farewells, and it was time for us to honor the majestic Morehead
telescope and observatory, the very place we gawked at our asteroids, and my group
scared each other and other groups in the darkness of the dome (or at least attempted
to). To show our gratitude to the observatory, we raided the gift shop and found out that
astronauts eat dry freeze ice cream sandwiches, or at least that’s what the packaging
said on the “space ice cream sandwich” from the gift shop. Happy with our purchases of
“Lunar Sour Candy,” a space shuttle keychain, a miniature deck of cards and a whole lot
of stickers, we headed to lunch. Nostalgia got to us, and we had to explore the campus
thoroughly before we left; we had to get a beverage from the cafe right outside the
dorms. We did try one too many free samples not to visit the cafe one last time. I mean,
we definitely couldn’t stop there. After all, it was the last full day, and we had to get
Subway. Ah! What a lunch that was as some of us wrestled with a triple-sauce-filled
six-inch sub that threatened to splash with every bite. Oh! And did I mention we had to
survive a yellow jacket attack since apparently they also like Subway (I don’t blame
them).

Having ticked that off my list of things to do at SSP, it was then time for the talent show. I
was blown away as I heard magnificent melodies, 315 digits of pi, the capitals of
countries I had to google to check their existence. Every passing second was cherished,
and everyone was aware of the intangible perception of six weeks. From the second
week onwards, I felt like I had lived on campus with the same people for years, but time
still seemed to pass faster than we could take it all in. Now, that lesson on special
relativity made perfect sense!

Then it was time for pictures, the official final picture, and the pictures of previous groups
I saw daily as I opened my SSP application. The photoshoot transitioned to a nostalgic
“The Last Supper” (credits to our TA, Lucy), a final dinner sitting around a table having
had the most bizarre and deepest conversations around the cafeteria’s famous fries; my
table took a trip down memory lane list our favourite and least favourite SSP things.

Following this, the scenes began to shift faster and faster as we spent quality time with
ice cream, pizza pockets, movies, and karaoke. Yelling and scream singing “Country
Roads” and many others as we competitively slapped the table playing cards (yes, the
miniature deck), I reminisced on the times we did the same on our way back from every
field trip. UNC had become home with astrophysics SSP. We helped each other, by
which I mean trauma, bonded over syntax errors while debugging, and pushed each
other to be the best versions of ourselves, all in six short weeks (or in the five years it felt
like we had been there). Everyone affirmed that this would not be the end of SSP, simply
a new beginning. But it was hard to believe that nothing from these six weeks would be
different moving forward— moving on to more sleep every day. With the weight of
departure hanging heavy over us, most of us took this opportunity to engage in very
intellectual conversations and a very intellectually created sport of Squash-Minton
(squash against the dorm walls but with badminton equipment). As we switched out the
losing opponent in an infinite loop, and just for one more point as if that would be it, the
deciding point, we went on as long as we heard conversion coming from the lounge.
Intellectual curiosity overcoming SSP’s Squash-Minton team, we joined the timeless
conversation with our lovely TAs (definitely before it was “suggested” curfew time). After
all, conversations like these made SSP special and so hard to leave the next day.

Reminiscing,
-Vivi

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 37 first appeared on SSP International.

Today, I woke up at 8:45, walked to the lecture hall, and ate oatmeal for breakfast. I eagerly checked the results of the simulations on our asteroid we had been running overnight. Painfully, ⅔ of them had crashed (maybe 100% CPU utilization for 12 hours wasn’t the smartest idea), but we still collected more than enough data – over 1600 simulations! Before lunch, we analyzed our data and prepared a presentation. We also ran an additional 400 simulations to reach an even 2000.

After lunch, we presented the results of our simulations and attended a lecture by the Southwest Research Institute about chaos theory – the final piece of work at SSP! We had some free time before and after dinner, and watched The Martian afterwards. We also had an observation through the telescope planned midway through the movie, but it was canceled because it was pretty cloudy. After we finished The Martian at 12:30, we walked back to the dorms, played some ICBM Ping Pong (disclaimer – the name is purely metaphorical and no intercontinental ballistic missiles were used), and went to bed at 1:30. One day left now.

Simulations of our asteroid (2012 FN62) that we had started last night.

Our presentation on the results of our simulations (Fun Fact: there is a 92% chance 2012 FN62 will be ejected from the Solar System within 50 million years).

Movie Night: The Martian!

-Adam

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 36 first appeared on SSP International.

We saw the end of the sunrise over the library, and, at around 6, proceeded down to the dining hall to get breakfast. However, it didn’t open until 7, so we continued to wander around campus.

We stopped by the stadium, and took this photo with the statue of the Tar Heel (which I just learned is some type of goat?). At this point, it was 6:45, and we were all feeling the repercussions of our minimal sleep, so Vivi and Cindy went back to the dorms after tasking Kira and I with acquiring pancakes for their breakfast. Kira and I, ever committed to every questionable idea we’ve ever had, pushed onwards and ultimately reached the dining hall at around 6:55.

While we waited for the dining hall to open, the Sun finally illuminated the whole sky, and we witnessed the morning golden hour over the back of Kenan Stadium. Finally, the dining hall opened, and we enjoyed breakfast for the first time in 35 days. I guess the breakfast selections must have changed between the first 2 days and now, because the pastry selection was so much better than I thought. They had everything bagels and cream cheese (which might be my favorite breakfast food) and legitimately wonderful croissants. I have to go again!

After stumbling back to the dorms in a tired daze (I genuinely do not remember this walk at all), I promptly fell asleep. At 1:18, Vivi’s alarm blared, and we both went through our usual morning routine (panicking, scrambling to brush our teeth and get dressed, and almost running to Phillips) to reach the lecture hall in time for our 1:30 PM lecture. We had guest lecturers from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) who taught us how to model our asteroid’s orbit for 50 million years into the future. Because it is not possible to exactly predict what will happen over this time period, “clones” of the asteroids were introduced with slight perturbations. We coded our simulations, and left them to run over dinner. After heading to the dining hall for dinner, I returned to Phillips to check on my asteroid simulation, expecting to be about 40% finished. Instead, I was frozen at 7% because my Python kernel had crashed inside of Jupyter Notebook, and thus I had to restart the entire process. I hope by tomorrow morning I at least have some data!

Finally, we headed to the auditorium-style room for some trivia prepared by the TAs! Some of the lovely categories were Ikea or Cheese (which we could have gotten 4/5 in if we hadn’t switched our answers last minute) and Minecraft Ores in Grayscale (which was doomed from the beginning). On the final question, we wagered everything, and promptly lost everything as no group answered the question correctly. Ultimately, the group with the most conservative bet won, even though they were in the middle of the scoreboard for the entire game. Now, we are back in the dorms, and as I prepare for sleep on my final weekend of the program, I feel so immensely grateful for the opportunities I was provided here and the people I was fortunate enough to meet. Leaving is bittersweet, but I look forward to reuniting with everyone in the future (and watching The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 when it releases)! I’m also realizing how little sleep I’m about to get — womp womp I guess!

-Emma B

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 35 first appeared on SSP International.

It was drizzling a bit outside, so I put on tennis shoes and brought my umbrella, but I didn’t think much of it. Little did I know what was to come… I hurriedly made my way to the morning lecture along with all the other groggy SSP Silly Sleepy People. I sat down in my chair, blinked, and the lecture seemed to have ended. My brain was having trouble forming thoughts, so I just collapsed at my table whilst my friends tried dragging me to workshop. After begrudgingly opening the laptop, I was able to lock in and implement differential corrections (basically the “final boss”) to our orbit determination code. It worked really well, decreasing the (root-mean-square) average deviation of our predicted right ascensions and declinations from the observed ones by a whole order of magnitude! Unfortunately… It also caused our calculated orbital elements to be massively magnified.

Thereafter we meandered the rainy campus on our way to lunch. As we were finishing up our meals, our phones blared with flash flood warnings, and we looked outside to see an inhospitable torrent of rain and thunder. Thankfully, our afternoon lectures were delayed, and the faculty offered to drive us from the dining hall to minimize the soakage. But when they finally arrived with the cars, the rain had almost entirely subsided, rendering it a slightly unnecessary (though appreciated) effort.

After regrouping, we had two lectures from the TAs Lucy and Junu, and both were very interesting. Lucy showcased some fascinating and less well-known examples of astronomy in history, and Junu guided us on a thought-provoking discussion on ethics in astronomy. Then we had some free time where I rehearsed singing with our lil choir group in preparation for the talent show. That was followed by our usual semiformal dinner, and afterwards we went to workshop to continue working on our OD (orbit determination) report. In that time, I was able to debug and perfect differential correction, utilizing all 5 of our observations instead of just 3 and greatly improving the accuracy and precision of our results.

After working on our report for a bit, it was time to head back to the dorms and sleep. Unfortunately, I had a nasty surprise awaiting me… When approaching my room, I was greeted with three SSPers huddled together standing six feet away from a bug at my door. They were scared for their life, somehow thinking it was a wasp, but it was just a small little beetle trying to crawl into my room. I swiftly dealt with it. I thought that was the end of it, but when I opened the door, I was greeted by the most horrific sight imaginable. There were millions of insects flying in the air and swarming the ground, all ready to assault me. Okay maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it sure felt like it; there were at least two hundred ants flying in the air and covering every square foot of floor.

(Caption: Despite their poses, they, in fact, did not contribute to the eradication of the beetle)

Thankfully, two TAs, Sonya and Junu, were still awake and came to our rescue! They brought weaponry, and we made a valiant effort to exterminate the bugs, killing them with a special dish soap concoction and also by plain smackage via broom or shoe. Slowly but surely, the bugs’ numbers dwindled, but alas, when we thought we had got them all, more continued to spawn—seemingly—out of the wood. Thus, we had to run the backup plan, which was to call Dr. Rosenthal, the site director, to get us new rooms. Miraculously, though it was 3 am, Dr. Rosenthal was still awake and came over save us. It took a bit of calling other staff and negotiating, but at the very-not-late-at-all time of 4 am, I finally got a safe room that wasn’t teeming with bugs possessing murderous intent. The shower that night felt so good. I will be forever grateful for you, Dr. Rosenthal, Sonya, and Junu for still being available and at our service at such late hours <3. Also thanks—I guess—to the onlookers who lay witness to our uninhabitable room and bid us their best wishes.

Postscript: There’s only so few days left here; I will cherish them the best I can. I have met the most interesting and wonderful and intelligent and kind and fun people here that I’ve ever met, and I’ve found so many that are similar to me (and even my clone!). We’ve been able to bond so strongly in our ephemeral time here; it feels like I’ve known some of the people here for years. Though this is just a transient moment in our lives, (SSSSSSS)SSP (silly sleeeepy smart stacked soupy (and sometimes sick) super summer science program) is an experience that none of us will ever forget.

Fighting bugs and demons—and the thought that I may never see some of these people ever again,

-Eve ( T_T)＼(^-^ )

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 33 first appeared on SSP International.

Nice to meet you! I have the honor of recapping our last Saturday at SSP , which includes our last Franklin Street run, last take-out dinner, and final deadline for our research report. Some of the happenings:

Franklin Street

• My group visited YoPo, which had awesome yogurt that tastes just like ice cream (I recommend a vanilla-chocolate swirl with chocolate sprinkles and 2 scoops of strawberry )
• Right before the last time I would actually need my wallet, I locked it in my room (and locked myself out!) so our dear TA Lucy paid for everything for me
• In the bookstore, my group found “The Giant Book of Insults” by Louis A. Safian, which has nearly one-thousand one liners, organized by aspect to make fun of (some examples were Bores, Show-Offs, and Wives!)

Dinner

• As usual, our Site Director Dr. Rosenthal pulled through with some really awesome options! We could pick from a main of Greek, Cheese, Pepperoni, or Sausage Pizza, a side of Greek or Caesar Salad, two appetizers of Mozzarella Sticks, Garlic Knots, Chicken Wings, or a Vegetable Platter, and dessert of a brownie or a chocolate chip cookie. Talk about a melting pot !

Research Report

• Today was the big day: our 15+ page research report was due! Teams were busy finishing up their self-consistency checks, fixing Latex errors, and adjusting to professors’ comments right until the 11:59 pm deadline.
• Once everyone submitted, we had a surprise celebration! We received our special UNC Astro T-shirts (designed by one of us!), picked up sparklers and strings, and took a bunch of pictures outside .

After a long day full of feverish finales and festivities, we headed back to our dorms around 1:00 am, and crashed in our ever-appealing beds (but not before some fun time in the lounge!) 

Thanks for reading!

-Aiman

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 34 first appeared on SSP International.

Birthdays away from home are scary, because you’re away from your family and it feels like you’re losing an important event with the people you would usually celebrate with. However, at SSP, I didn’t feel scared; I felt pretty happy, and I felt like if I had to spend another birthday with people like at the UNC SSP program, I’d be perfectly content with it, because I truly enjoy the company of my peers and I’m glad I get to call them my friends. We had a morning workshop working on our report and then tuned in to the afternoon lectures of our wonderful TA’s, Vishesh and Sonya. After dinner, we celebrated with ice cream cake, a treat that definitely lifted up the grim moods of all of us! 

-Katie

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 32 first appeared on SSP International.

What else has happened recently? It’s all a blur. I found out today that my favorite cookies were gluten free, and now all I can taste is whatever gluten substitute they use. I’m not eating them anymore. It’s really sad. What else? A TV show is still filming by our dorm–today’s their last day–and that’s been really entertaining to watch, too. One of the actors came into our dorm and left us a note. All the filming overall around us has been really fun to see. It’s been nice to take a break from lecture and physics to watch a real TV show get made.

-Kira

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 31 first appeared on SSP International.

Today, July 9th, 2024, had a deceptively simple schedule: 3 hours of workshop in the morning, a guest lecture in the afternoon, and then 5 more hours of workshop at night. But today was also a monumental day: our final OD code is due at midnight, no exceptions.

Last night, in a bid for extra sleep, I turned off all but one of my alarms. Big mistake. I slept right through it and woke up just 10 minutes before the morning workshop. I leaped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and sprinted downstairs for a quick breakfast, but miraculously I was still one of the first to arrive at the lecture hall. During the workshop, I focused on the orbit visualization and report for my group while my partners put the finishing touches on their OD codes.

After lunch, I was heading back to the dorm for a quick nap when I saw the crew filming for a TV show near our building. Thus I changed my plans up a bit to watch the scene for a few minutes and then take a shorter nap. Sadly, I was not allowed to take any photos to post on this blog.

After this little side quest and a short nap, it was back to Phillips Hall for a guest lecture by Richard Chuang, the cofounder of PDI and an SSP alumnus. His talk was exciting, and he shared stories from his groundbreaking and innovative career in the entertainment industry, where he contributed to various iconic films and set many industry firsts. At the end of the talk, Mr. Chuang encouraged us to always seek out opportunities for innovation and to leverage the latest tools and technologies.

Post-lecture, I had an hour of workshop time before dinner. The room buzzed with energy as small groups wrestled with the OD code, while those who had finished worked feverishly on their group reports. After dinner, we continued our epic battle with the OD code. My report grew to 7 pages in just one day, and I’m almost certain it will double in length by the end of the program. I typed away, feeling the weight of exhaustion setting in.

At 00:20 a.m., I trudged back to the dorms, barely awake and starving. I decided to make my last bowl of ramen. It wasn’t great after three minutes in the microwave, but hunger trumped taste, and I devoured it. Seeking a quick break, I played 30 minutes of RPG-style “ping pong” with a friend as my exercise for the day. By 1:30 a.m. I was upstairs and washing up, and I finally crawled into bed at 1:50 a.m., utterly spent.

∩――――∩

||     ∧ ﾍ　 ||

||    (* ´ ｰ`) ZZzz

|ﾉ^⌒⌒づ`￣  ＼

(　ノ　　⌒ ヽ ＼

＼　　||￣￣￣￣￣||

　 ＼,ﾉ||

-Luca

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 30 first appeared on SSP International.

Afternoon lecture was at 1:30 pm, and this one was especially interesting. We discussed galaxies – how they form, how they merge, and how we discovered them in the first place. Dr. Z kept us engaged the entire time and the cup of coffee I had during the break didn’t hurt either. After the lecture, we got dressed up for dinner and then had some good conversations about the pursuit of knowledge over chicken and rice. After dinner, it was coding time and I worked up on finishing the OD code and running it for my group’s asteroid.

Finally, the day ended with half an hour of a Hindi movie in the lounge with friends. Overall, a pretty normal day at SSP and a pretty normal night – hard to make out when one ends, and when one begins.

-Rain

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 29 first appeared on SSP International.

We had a precious 4 hours free time in the afternoon of the day, and I did singing practice with a group of people in the lounge. It was so enjoyable, since I haven’t been practicing singing with others since middle school. We decided to do A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman, and I’m gonna sing the harmony in the middle of the song. It took me some time to get familiarized with the harmony part, which is only slightly different from the melody. It was challenging to stay in my notes when singing along with others. Thank you Riya for helping me practice and correcting my miserable singing. As an international student whose first language is not English and lives in a non-English environment, I sometimes feel disconnected with people when I don’t understand people’s cultural references or finding little shared topics, but music builds strong bonds between us, I felt engaged with the music as well as other people.

After the singing practice, we went to Franklyn street. This is my favorite time of the week, because I can finally get some Asian food from Target and boba stores. I love the boba place we’ve been visiting every week, as they serve authentic Taiwanese boba and Taiwanese pancake, popcorn chicken, pork rice… (starving in the computer lab while writing this post)!

Last but not least, happy birthday to Dr. Rosenthal! Thank you for your effort on preparing us the amazing buffet.

-Zihan

The post UNC Astro Blog Post Day 27 first appeared on SSP International.