Summer 1999 MIRA Quarterly Newsletter: Congratulations Maren!

Summer 1999

Spring Science Fairs

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Maren Christensen stands in front of her exhibit at the
Monterey County Science Fair. She used the Weaver Student Observatory
to obtain the spectra of bright stars and planets, which she used to show
that the light from the planets is a mixture of reflected sunlight
and the absorption due to gases in the planetary atmospheres.

Maren, a freshman at York school, won first prize in the senior high school Physics and Astronomy Division. This permitted her to take her project, completed under the direction of Dr. Bruce Weaver, to the California State Science Fair where she won second prize in the same category! She was thrilled by the outcome and promptly went off to a two week astronomy camp for high school students in Tucson.

We’re thrilled, too. Congratulations, Maren!

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Emily Cohan also researched her Science Fair project at MIRA,
but this didn’t involve telescopes: she studied the electrical power
at the Hamming Astronomy Center using a sophisticated UPS on
our Field Trips to the Stars RAID server. (photo Laura Cohan).