Astronomy Camp ATC 2024 

Day 8 (June 29): It All Comes Together

Camp's last full day started with breakfast and rushing to finish 3D constellation models, PowerPoint presentations, and data reduction steps before our presentations in the afternoon. We started with the four constellation groups, and then the campers presented on each of their individual projects, lamenting the clouds that meant most had to work with archival data.

We handed out our Camp t-shirts to wear during graduation tomorrow, and fired a celebratory liquid nitrogen-powered cannon on the helipad outside before sitting down to watch Camp's last sunset. After dinner and the last of the presentations, counselor and Mount Lemmon Sky School instructor Sam Nasreldine gave a short talk on astrobiology and his research, modeling life on icy Solar System moons like Europa and Enceladus.

Day 7 (June 28): Race to the Finish!

After the last two crazy travel days, everyone was eager to take it a little bit slower today. After our late breakfast, counselor Meredith Stone spoke about her research on galaxy evolution (the study of galaxies and how they grow and change over time). She also explained why the James Webb Space Telescope, and infrared telescopes in general, are so important for studying galaxies in the distant Universe, and answered some great questions from the campers.

The students spent a rainy afternoon working on their constellation projects and self-directed group projects with the counselors, using the same tools that real astronomers use to process their data. The rain let up a bit in the early evening, and we made it up to the top of the mountain after dinner to see a cloudy, but beautiful, sunset.

Once the sun set, we got to take a quick tour of the Catalina Sky Survey's telescope at the summit of Mount Lemmon. The Catalina Sky Survey is an Arizona-based asteroid search program that scans the sky every night to detect and track near-Earth asteroids. CSS, which hires many University of Arizona Astronomy and Planetary Science students and graduates, is the world's leading discoverer of potentially hazardous asteroids, and agencies such as NASA use its data to determine which asteroids may pose a threat to Earth now or in the future.

We came inside after touring the CSS telescope to do our traditional College and Career Panel. Each of the counselors spent a few minutes talking about their individual path to astronomy and Astronomy Camp and the lessons they learned along the way, and the campers got to ask questions about the college experience and college application process.

We ended the evening finishing up our group projects, which the campers will present tomorrow afternoon. The end of Camp is coming fast!

Day 6 (June 27): The Skies Clear! (a little)

Back to Tucson and Mount Lemmon today: the campers woke up after their short night of sleep and enjoyed a pancake breakfast made by the counselors before taking a group picture, taking a quick tour of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, and loading up into the car. The drive down Mount Graham is, if anything, more harrowing than the trip up, so we stopped partway down for a relaxed picnic lunch in a campground on the way.

We arrived in Tucson in the early evening and piled out of the cars for a pizza dinner at Steward Observatory, which houses the Astronomy department at the University of Arizona. The campers got to see the graduate and undergraduate classrooms (and the cool art on all the walls) before we went down the street to tour the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, which constructs giant mirrors used in telescopes in Arizona and around the world.

Next was the campers' most anticipated stop: getting turned loose in Safeway before heading back up Mount Lemmon. Snacks in hand, we started up the mountain. We watched the skies clear as we drove, and decided on the spur of the moment to divert to Mount Bigelow and the Kuiper telescope to take advantage before the clouds rolled back in.

We spent about four hours on Mount Bigelow, looking through the telescope at galaxies and nebulae, taking photos, and looking out for shooting stars. After our very long day, we drove the rest of the way back to the summit, unloaded, and fell into bed. Here's to a more relaxing day tomorrow! 

Day 5 (June 26): Down One Mountain, Up Another

Today was the first half of one of the most anticipated camp activities: a field trip! We woke up bright and early and loaded our sleeping bags, pillows, and changes of clothes into the vehicles before heading down Mount Lemmon to make our way to Mount Graham.

Mount Graham, located about 75 miles from Tucson as the crow flies, is the home of three telescopes owned or operated by Steward Observatory: the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, and the Large Binocular Telescope. The LBT is currently the largest single-mount optical-wavelength telescope in the world, and we get to sleep in its lobby tonight!

We caravaned down Mount Lemmon and through Tucson to the interstate, stopping along the way for a picnic lunch before starting the multi-hour trek up into the Pinaleno Mountains. The first hour or so is nice and paved, but the last hour is a rocky dirt road that makes for a very bouncy ride. We arrived at the LBT, a little dizzy, late in the afternoon and formed a fire brigade to shuffle everyone's luggage into the lobby and roll out sleeping bags before enjoying a tamale dinner from Tucson mainstay Tucson Tamale. 

We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset from the LBT's catwalk before heading up into the telescope itself for a tour. Unfortunately, the clouds that made the sunset so beautiful meant that we couldn't open the telescope and see it observe, but the operating team were kind enough to rotate the telescope within its enclosure so we could watch it move and see the two 8.4-meter-diameter mirrors that give the telescope its name. The scale of the LBT is hard to convey in photos and videos, but it's truly a sight to behold.

The campers spent the evening hanging out in the LBT's lounge and heading down in groups to tour the nearby Sub-Millimeter Telescope, one of Steward Observatory's two radio telescopes, before heading down to the lobby to get some sleep.

Tomorrow we'll be doing the bouncy drive back down the mountain, heading to Tucson to tour Steward Observatory and the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, which created the LBT's mirrors, before going back up Mount Lemmon. It should be another exciting, busy, slightly sleep-deprived day!

Day 4 (June 25) Blog: Lots of Planets!

Good morning!…sort of. After we woke up and ate “breakfast” (at 11:30 am), the campers got started on a project that will take up a lot of their time for the rest of camp.

The Advanced Teen Camp has two main projects. The constellation project, which the campers started on Day 2, is done in four large groups and is much more structured. Each group chooses a constellation, and each group member presents on one of that constellation’s stars. They also pick a “deep-sky object,” such as a star cluster, nebula, or galaxy, in the constellation’s vicinity to observe. They’ll present these projects in their groups on the last full day of camp.

Today, the campers started working on the other project they’ll complete at Astronomy Camp, which is much more self-directed. The campers work in smaller groups and pick a target to observe and an instrument with which to observe it. They can choose from the three telescopes on Mount Lemmon, the 12-meter radio telescope on Kitt Peak, or the Sub-Millimeter Telescope on Mount Graham. These projects vary widely: the goal might be to detect a certain molecule in an interstellar cloud of gas, create a full-color image of a nearby galaxy, or watch an exoplanet transit its host star to determine the planet’s size. Like a professional astronomer, they have to propose their observations to a committee (the counselors) who will help structure the project and schedule the observations.

The campers started working on those proposals this morning. Afterwards, Dr. Ryan Boyden gave a short talk on exoplanet detection and led an activity. We explored the properties of exoplanets that have been detected and characterized with different methods, which taught us about the types of planets that we can detect with current technology. Remember: the types of planets that we can detect aren’t necessarily the most common planets!

Before dinner, we “hiked the Solar System.” Starting at the Sky Center with a dodgeball representing the Sun, we walked a mile and a half along Mount Lemmon to build a scale model of the Solar System, from Mercury (50 feet from the dodgeball and the size of a grain of sand) to Neptune (3/4 of a mile away and the size of an M&M) and back. As a bonus, the hike had some great views of the Santa Catalina Mountains and Tucson below.

After dinner, we headed back to the Kuiper 61” telescope, which we visited (but didn’t use) on the first day of camp. The campers got to see the telescope in action as we observed the star Arcturus and the globular cluster M13 before the sky clouded over and we headed back to the summit for bed.

Tomorrow we drive from Mount Lemmon to Mount Graham to visit the Large Binocular Telescope and Sub-Millimeter Telescope. It’s going to be an exciting trip: stay tuned!

Day 3 (June 24) Blog: Here Comes the Sun!

We woke up for breakfast at 11 am after going to bed at 2: the campers are getting on a real astronomer’s (or maybe just a teenager’s?) schedule.

After our very late brunch, the sky was sunny enough to sprint to the summit and do some solar observing activities! The campers looked at the Sun through a telescope equipped with an H-alpha filter that displays only a very specific wavelength of light, used the Sun’s power to burn holes in their worksheets, and set up a pinhole camera to project an image of the Sun on the ground.

Once the clouds rolled back in, we went back inside to do an activity on image reduction. The campers used an image processing software called JS9 to align images of the nearby Sombrero Galaxy in three different color filters, and combine them to create a full-color image. The campers will use these skills later this week when reducing the data they’ll obtain when we travel to Mount Graham and observe with the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, as well as the images we'll take here at Mount Lemmon.

Although we could see thunderstorms in the distance, the sky above Mount Lemmon cleared just after sunset, in time for campers to observe their chosen constellations by eye and look at some stars, galaxies, and nebulae through the 32” telescope on the top of the mountain. We had a great time stargazing, watching the far-off lightning strikes, and taking photos of the beautiful objects through the telescope until the clouds rolled back in around 11.

We ended the evening by watching some videos on Mount Graham and the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, both of which we’ll be visiting later in the week. Some exciting days are coming!

Day 2 (June 23) Blog: When It Rains...

Our first full day on Mount Lemmon started bright and early. After breakfast at 8:30 am, the campers split into their research teams to get started on the group project they’ll be working on throughout the week. Each team picked a constellation that will be visible from Mount Lemmon this week; they chose Bootes, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, and Corona Borealis. Each group member chose a star in the constellation to study this week: they’ll observe it with their naked eye, get photos of it with our telescopes, and research its properties for a presentation at the end of the week. 

After lunch, the campers learned about the nature and behavior of light. Dr. McCarthy discussed waves, wavelength, frequency, and energy, and then we rotated through four stations to do hands-on activities exploring the ways light and matter interact.

With the skies still cloudy by mid-afternoon, it seemed like the possibility of observing on the Mount Lemmon visible-light telescopes during the night was slim. However, we had an ace up our sleeve: remotely controlling a 12-meter radio telescope, located 100 miles away on Kitt Peak, southwest of Tucson. Later in the week, the campers will get to design an experiment and choose their own targets to observe and analyze. In preparation for these projects, Dr. Samantha Scibelli talked about her research, where she uses large radio telescopes like the one on Kitt Peak to detect complex molecules in the clouds of gas and dust between stars. Molecules like the ones Sam studies may play a role in the formation of life in the Universe!

We got another beautiful sunset on the summit after dinner, but clouds were still blocking out most of the sky, and our planned radio telescope observations were on hold due to lightning on Kitt Peak. While we waited for the radio telescope to come back online, our research teams got to alternate between two activities: while half the group worked with Austin to assemble their own small telescopes from 3D-printed parts, the other half got to learn about their chosen constellations in the portable planetarium with Dr. McCarthy and Wayne.

Around midnight, the 12-meter radio telescope came back online! Hanga showed us around the tools used to control the telescope and view its data, and we started taking observations of two targets: the beautiful Messier 101 spiral galaxy, and a planetary nebula called NGC 7027. Dr. McCarthy ended the evening by doing some experiments with liquid nitrogen, including pouring it over campers’ hands (it’s totally safe, we promise).

Even after the campers went to bed, the radio telescope kept taking data, which we’ll be analyzing tomorrow.

We really appreciate all the campers being so flexible as the weather forced us to change our plans. Here’s to clear skies later in the week!

 The clouds parted in the west just in time for us to enjoy a beautiful sunset and look at the clusters of ladybugs that descend on Mount Lemmon in the summer, hanging out on plants and on the sides of the telescope domes. 

Even though it was cloudy, we decided to head to the Gerard P. Kuiper 61-inch telescope, about a 20-minute drive from the summit on the nearby Mount Bigelow. The campers got a tour of the telescope (the largest one on the mountain) before we headed back up to the summit to go to bed.