Astronomy Component Leads to Accreditation

Honors Students Lauren McCarthy ’16 and Chelsea Comfort ’14 completed an Honors Component with professor Ralph Pass that led to the accreditation of the Merrimack Observatory by the Minor Planet Center at Harvard University. Chelsea describes the importance of their component, stating, “This will earn the Merrimack Observatory a site identifier, benefiting future users of the observatory because the Center will accept Merrimack College’s position data for asteroids and comets.”

Chelsea and Lauren used an astronomical camera to take photographs of five different asteroids over two nights. They used technologies for the telescope such as TheSkyX, Merrimack Observatory Smart Telescope (MOST), and the software Push Here Dummy (PHD). To find the location of the asteroid, they used Ralph Patrick Pass Astronomical Image Processing (RPPAIP). There will be a plaque ceremony for the Lauren and Chelsea’s work in the spring.