Not Enough Complicated? HAHAHA

Once again, I sadly have to write a blog that covers the past two days. Our project was due today at 2 PM, and things were a mess. 

Remember how I wrote that I wished our project could have been a little more complicated? That has

Campfiiire

to be the funniest thing I've ever written. Our project was so hard, that no data could be found to prove what we needed even after an almost all-nighter of searching. 

But before we go into that, let's go back to yesterday afternoon. Our first problem involved finding the number of pixels in a video's screenshot to help us find the distance between the binary stars. The two other pairs in our group also had the same problem even though they were working on slightly different topics. Once Prof. Kron gave us an idea on how to figure this out, we had much more hope. 

But then, somehow, we messed up on that too. Lindsay and I used the wrong number for distance on Google since we hadn't read what exactly that number was for. We then spent an hour trying to figure out what was wrong in our calculations, but there wasn't anything wrong. The only thing wrong was the number from Google, which could easily be changed to the right value. 

Lake at Yerkes

Now that we had the current distance for both star systems, we spent ages trying to find the old distance between the stars to compare them. One of the stars we had looked up in the telescope had a period of 5000 years, so there was no way we could find data from that old, or even half, the age. The other had a period of 700 years, so finding data for that seemed much more reasonable. 

In between hours of me trying to find data and Lindsay trying to fix all our calculations, our class hosted a campfire after dinner. During this time, all of us bonded more than before. We played Blob Tag, from which I am still sore, and a weird version of Ninja. It can obviously be seen that this trip has brought our class a lot closer than before. Personally, I didn't even know most people's names and I never saw them out of class, so there wasn't much time to bond. I had only gotten close to the people in the area where I sat in class, like Carly and Nikita. Now, I can say that I am closer to Nick, Lister, Jared, MA, Mac, Ben, and have talked a lot to everyone else in class. 

We all were working in the lounge, and after a while everyone left except me. I ended up falling

Picture of a redgiant from 40"

asleep there on the floor, and later realized I should probably go to my room. I managed to finish my part of the write-up before class started, which was a miracle to me because I had spent so much of my night trying to find data that I didn't even know if I could wake up. 

When we got to class, Ms.Ramseyer told Lindsay and I that we hadn't analyzed the image enough so maybe we should add something. With this, we went to Prof. Kron for help and out of all his intelligent and practical suggestions, we decided to find the mass of our two binary systems and calculate if one of our stars match up to it's predicted orbit. 

Keep in mind, this all happened in the span of 1.5 hours, because we had a deadline to meet in 2.5 hours. Lindsay and I ran back and somehow just automatically ended up splitting the work. She found the masses while I checked our calculated distance to the predicted orbit. After some math, our project was left on a high note. We found that the distance we had calculated from using the data collected from the 40" were correct. 

These presentations marked the end of class. Even more dramatic for me, Lindsay and I were presenting last. This relieved all of us with so much pressure, but also piled on sadness and disbelief that it was all over. 

Lindsay, MA, and Nick making a sandcastle

I went with Lindsay and Carly to dip into the lake, then hung out with others in our class, and then went back with Carly to grab more food and relax on the shore. Before I knew it, it was time to head back to the Observatory so that we could look through the telescopes one last time for fun. The sky was extremely clear tonight too, so it was a stunning, beautiful way to end the trip. Lindsay and I also used our favorite 40" one more time. This time Jon and Lori were with us, both who are tall and decently buff, so we really didn't need to do much of the pushing. 

Around midnight, we all got in a line and took pictures with the professor. Lindsay and I got our pictures taken with a camera and phone, so I apologized for being "extra." This started a whole conversation with all three professors asking what that means. Somehow that then led to Lindsay and I also explaining what "lowkey" means. Apparently both of these words are really mostly just used in the Bay Area. 

After saying all our final goodbyes to all three professors, we headed back to our rooms. To be completely honest, Lindsay and I spent the next four hours socializing with people from our class to make up for the sadness of having to leave soon. I still can't believe we're nearing the end, but as the time creeps nearer the morning, it's beginning to hit me more that the trip is nearing its end.

"What is this word 'extra'?"