Jul 28

2010

Observing at WIRO

Last night I went to the university’s WIRO observatory with Dr. Chip Kobulnicky, the director, and another student. This was my first trip up to WIRO and I’m looking forward to many more. I joined Dr. Kobulnicky’s research team so that I may gain valuable experience and hopefully satisfy the undergraduate research requirements to obtain a BS rather than a BA in physics.

During my first night there, I tried to follow along as the others set up the telescope and computers for observing. It was a lot to take in. I am not terribly skilled at hands-on activities and practical applications of physics, but that is why I am doing this. It’s time that I learn what all this book work has been for all along. Unfortunately, physics labs didn’t help me much in this area. I always felt rushed or even completely left behind as others did most of the work. It seemed that a lot of the careful detail required of a scientist was left out due to the way labs were structured. Whether or not I was actively participating in a lab, my partners generally prioritized getting out early rather than taking careful measurements and observations. This meant that if I tried to do things the “right” way, I would be ignored as my partners took over to do their hasty “good enough” way. If I was a little lost in the first place, hastiness certainly didn’t help me to catch on and made it immensely difficult to right up my own lab report. This was so frustrating! Especially during my upper division semi-independent lab. I still had to work with partners, but I was required to right an authentic scientific-quality report sans partners. Sometimes I wished I could just go back to the lab and redo it all on my own.

Anyhow, I hope this WIRO experience will be a positive one. It is definitely a plus that I was able to actively participate in data collection on the first night. Now I just need a couple of nights to actually set things up on my own too. It’s much easier to learn by doing rather than by observing, though I admit that another night of plain observing will also do me good in this case. I certainly don’t want to break anything.

I was supposed to be up there again tonight as well, but the weather didn’t appear good enough for observing. Last night, too, the clouds took over and sent us home earlier than planned. Tomorrow is my last officially scheduled day for now but, from what I see in the forecast, it looks like thunderstorms will be a problem for the rest of the week. Of course, I can arrange to accompany other observers later on, but I wanted to get some decent experience as soon as possible. Tomorrow isn’t completely ruled out yet. I’ll just have to wait and see.

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I am: Shelley Limegrover

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