ANN: CUREA 2007 at Mount Wilson Observatory

CUREA 2007 TO OFFER EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
AT MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY JULY 8-21

The Consortium for Undergraduate Research and Education in Astronomy
(CUREA) will repeat its highly successful in-residence educational program
at Mount Wilson Observatory for the 18th time this summer, from July 8
through 21, 2007. The program is aimed at undergraduate physics and
astronomy majors, with junior or senior standing, who are considering a
career in science or teaching.

Staff and students will pursue a short on-site course in astrophysics and
observational astronomy using the historic facilities at Mount Wilson.
Instruments available to the students will include the Snow Horizontal
Solar Telescope, used in conjunction with a high-resolution spectrograph; a
16-inch Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with CCD camera and SBIG
stellar spectrograph; and the historic 60-inch reflector, used by Harlow
Shapley to discover the size of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The CUREA program will emphasize how our present understanding of the Sun
has been achieved and how it relates to the astrophysics of all stars. The
emphasis will be on hands-on experience. Attention will be devoted to many
observable solar phenomena, such as sunspots, granulation, limb darkening,
important spectral lines, Zeeman splitting of solar lines, the measurement
of solar rotation using the Doppler shift of a spectral line, and
observation of the solar 5-minute oscillations. Nighttime observing will
extend to celestial objects such as the Moon, planets, variable stars,
clusters, galaxies and other deep-sky objects. Students will learn how to
process CCD images and spectra from the 16-inch telescope. Discussions led
by staff members will deal with topics in astrophysics as well as the
design and use of the available telescopes and their accessories. During
the second week of the program, each student will work on a special project
she or he has chosen.

Additional activities will include an introduction to ongoing Mount Wilson
research projects, short presentations on important contemporary and
historical astronomical topics, special lectures by distinguished
astronomers, tours of research facilities on the mountain, and field trips
to JPL, Caltech and Griffith Observatory. The tuition fee of $1500 covers
all expenses during the two weeks of the course, including room and board
on the mountain. Students will reside in Mount Wilsonÿs famous
´Monastery,¡ home of resident astronomers since the days of Hale and
Hubble.

Mount Wilson Observatory is the home of a group of telescopes that have,
for many decades, made important contributions to astronomy. The Snow
Telescope was the first major solar telescope in the world and the first
telescope to be installed on Mount Wilson when George Ellery Hale founded
the Observatory in 1904. The 100-inch telescope was used by Edwin Hubble
to determine the expansion of the Universe. The 60-inch telescope for many
years explored how other stars that look like the sun also behave like the
sun in its 22-year-long magnetic activity cycle. Following the early
tradition of Albert Michelson and interferometry at Mount Wilson,
scientists from the University of California at Berkeley have built an
interferometer for very high angular resolution studies of bright stars at
infrared wavelengths, and Georgia Stateÿs Center for High Angular
Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) has built the world's largest optical
interferometer array at Mount Wilson.

For more information about CUREA 2007, see http://www.curea.org or contact:
program director Dr. Paula Turner. E-mail: , phone:
(740) 427-5367. The application deadline for the 2007 program is March 15.

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Questions can also be directed to me at mikes at mtwilson dot edu.

Mike Simmons