Carson High senior to give stellar presentation on astrophotography, asteroid tracking Saturday
Submitted by Kelsey Penrose on Fri, 03/01/2019 - 3:04pm
Event Date:
March 2, 2019 - 6:30pm
For Carson High School Senior Adelina Pacheco, studying the stars is a family tradition.
Her three older siblings completed senior projects on various interstellar subjects, and now it’s her turn.
Pacheco has spent the last year researching astrophotography and asteroid tracking, spending her nights looking into high tech telescopes and mapping the stars under the mentorship of Carson High School Astronomy teacher James Bean.
Her oldest sister used to take her along to the observatory while she studied the skies, and then her brother did the same, and finally the sister above her.
But until recently, Pacheco was more interested in getting out of the cold and going home.
“It changed for me when I went with my sister to watch the lunar eclipse,” said Pacheco. “She took pictures of it as it eclipsed and there were people there watching with us, telling me fun facts about the moon and the eclipse, and it all finally clicked for me.”
Pacheco completed three asteroid tracking recon missions over the course of the year, undeterred by the bad weather clouding up the skies. She pulled a black and white map from a folder with orbs scattering the page, some large, some small, some clustered together, some spread far apart. In the center was a single small x where the asteroid would cross the sky.
“See this formation here,” she said, pointing to a tiny cluster of stars which to my untrained eyes looked exactly like the rest. “You have to find a formation in the sky through a telescope lens, which transfers the images to a television screen. I chose this cluster because it’s shaped like a lightning bolt.”
When she pointed it out, I saw it, like seeing rabbits and hats in cloud formations.
She went on to say that once you find the cluster, you can pinpoint the telescope to the location the asteroid will travel, and the telescope, through a device like a camera, will track and record the asteroid’s path.
Once the data and graphs are collected from the asteroid recon missions, they are sent off to an agency that uses the data to help track asteroids, using a cooperative research method.
Astrophotography is similarly tricky.
On an unprocessed stellar photograph, she said, it doesn’t look like much or anything. But after adding light and color, we’re presented with the stunning photographs agencies like NASA put out to give the public a view of the stars impossible to see with the naked eye.
Pacheco intends to attend Western Nevada College after she graduates this year to complete her core classes and figure out what field of study she wants to go into. However, she intends to continue Astronomy as a hobby, even if she doesn’t study it as a profession.
“I have nieces and nephews now I can take with me to the observatory, like my siblings took me,” she said. “Even if they don’t care at first and are more interested in their phones like I was, maybe they’ll also have the same moment I had where it all clicks.”
Pacheco will give a presentation at the Western Nevada College Davis Observatory this Saturday March 2, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., weather permitting. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, the presentation will be rescheduled for the following Saturday at the same time.
“I just want people to realize through this public presentation that the stars are more than just space rocks or balls of gas,” she said. “It’s actually really, really cool.”
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