MIRA's intern program for high school and college students continues with the arrival this fall of Jennifer McAlmond who, like several other MIRA interns before her, is a student in the Monterey Academy of Oceanographic Science at Monterey High School. She will assist with our archival database project, in addition to other duties.
Jennifer McAlmond
MIRA volunteer Donna Dulo has designed a new class, "A Field Trip to the Sun," to be offered under the auspices of the Lyceum of Monterey County. The two-hour class will be held at the Hamming Astronomy Center and in the Weaver Student Observatory on Saturday, October 26, from 1:30pm until 3:30pm.
The new class complements Donna's "A Field Trip to the Moon," which will be held this year on Friday, October 11, from 6:30pm until 8:30pm in the Hamming Astronomy Center and the Weaver Student Observatory.
Enrollment in both classes is through the Lyceum of Monterey County, which charges a small fee for each class. Call 372-6098 or visit www.lyceum.org for further information.
The large wooden building at MIRA headquarters that houses the Ralph Knox Shops used to be a large consumer of energy for heating. The heating is necessary not so much for comfort as it is to lower the humidity, which would otherwise cause our expensive machinery to corrode. Indeed, the furnace is controlled by a humidistat rather than a thermostat.
Recently, however, generous grants from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and the Ralph Knox Foundation allowed the installation of several large skylights to warm the building with solar energy. Simultaneously, roof insulation was installed to retain the heat.
These improvements will give MIRA significant savings in gas heating and electric lighting, and make the Shops more pleasant to work in.
Because the MIRA Newsletter is printed in black and white, we cannot share with readers some of the striking color images that MIRA astronomers have produced in recent years. To make up for this lack, we are creating a new Image Gallery on the MIRA web site, www.mira.org. This issue's cover image of M51, for example, is in reality a color electronic image. To see it and other celestial objects in color, watch for our new Image Gallery.
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Last updated 12/15/02 DMC