Categorized | Sci-Tech

Parker School student tracks asteroid

Parker School student Lysha Matsunobu stands next to the Caltech Cannon in Pasadena during her Summer Science Program. (Photo courtesy of Parker School)

Parker School student Lysha Matsunobu stands next to the Caltech Cannon in Pasadena during her Summer Science Program. (Photo courtesy of Parker School)

MEDIA RELEASE

Over 39 intense days this summer, Parker senior Lysha Matsunobu operated a telescope to take images of a near-earth asteroid, and wrote her own computer software to precisely measure its position and calculate its orbit around the sun.

Matsunobu joined 35 other top science students from around the U.S. and the world for learning, late nights, and collaboration at the Summer Science Program (SSP) on the campus of Westmont College.

Since 1959, gifted teenagers have come to this unique program to spend their days in college-level lectures, and their nights imaging and measuring the speck of light from a distant asteroid. Years and even decades later, many alumni refer to SSP as “the educational experience of a lifetime.”

Matsunobu and her colleagues worked closely with university professors, met prominent guest speakers, and enjoyed behind-the-scenes tours of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, and Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

SSP is an independent non-profit, operated in cooperation with Caltech, MIT, New Mexico Tech, and Westmont College.

Matsunobu said, “SSP was exhilarating because never before had I been surrounded by peers so passionately devoted to science. The program immersed me in academia while leaving me only with priceless memories and exceptional friends.”

— Find out more:
www.summerscience.org
www.parkerschoolhawaii.org

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RSS Weather Alerts

  • An error has occurred, which probably means the feed is down. Try again later.

 

Quantcast