STUDENT ESSAY COMPETITION WINNERS

Jeremy Macon of Hammond High School (Hammond, Indiana) and Shae Trumpy of Dakota High School (Dakota IL) will be attending the Macintosh Astronomy Workshop based upon their excellent essays. Both students received a copy of Starry Night Pro and the 4 DVD Starry Night set. Imaginova also provided their sponsoring teachers with a copy of Starry Night High School. Starry Night High School is Starry Night Pro with a 300 page Teacher's Guide. Congratulations to both students for their efforts. Excerpts from both essays may be found below.

Jeremy Macon - Hammond High School

On a clear night in Northwest Indiana (and there are not many of those), I find myself looking up at the sky. When I find Orion, for example, I first look for the star Betelgeuse on his belt to help indicate his position to me and then I look for the rest of his body. I see the Big Dipper and Little Dipper all the time. I become fascinated thinking about the way sailors from long ago used the North Star to navigate the seas. Then, I look for the other constellations that take much more imagination to figure out. When I say, “You can’t see the stars in Hammond,” I am proven wrong by seeing photographs of stars and planets taken in Hammond by ordinary people with telescopes who just have a love for star gazing.

Shae Trumpy - Dakota High School

Astronomy has been so much a part of my past, our past, that I cannot ignore it. I have read articles and have seen programs on television telling of how Stonehenge may be a calendar or how the Pyramids seem to have been made to align with different constellations. Ever since I was young I would go outside at night just to look at the latest wonder of the moon and stars; it could have been an eclipse, a meteor shower, or even a comet. No matter what it was I would stand it utter awe of the enormousness of the universe, and I knew that I was standing beneath something entire cultures have been based on. Astronomy was such an important part of the ancient peoples’ lives then, and that importance has carried on to me today.

The student essay winners recieving their awards; from right to left, Dave Whipps (Imaginova), Jeremy Macon (Hammond High School), Jeff Terry (Illinois Institue of Technology), and Shae Trumpy (Dakota High School).

The students enjoyed their interactions with the speakers and attendees. The students were able to speak with Keynote speaker Professor Richard Kron as well. The Macintosh Astronomy Workshop organizers were very pleased with the success of the student essay competition and will continue this program at all future MAWs.

Jeremy and Shae with Professor Kron.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Professor Richard Kron, the current director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, has agreed to deliver the Keynote Address at the Macintosh Astronomy Workshop. Professor Kron will describe the survey and recent results. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is the most ambitious astronomical survey project ever undertaken. The survey will map in detail one-quarter of the entire sky, determining the positions and absolute brightnesses of more than 100 million celestial objects. It will also measure the distances to more than a million galaxies and quasars. The Apache Point Observatory, site of the SDSS telescopes, is operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC).

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The address of this site is: http://mrmac.mr.aps.anl.gov/~macastroworkshop/competition.html