From: baalke@zagami.jpl.nasa.gov   
      
   Caltech News Release   
   For Immediate Release   
   September 22, 2003   
      
   Old Caltech Telescope Yields New Science   
      
   Contact: Mark Wheeler   
            (626) 395-8733   
            wheel@caltech.edu   
      
   PASADENA, Calif. - Meet Sarah Horst, throwback. The planetary science   
   major, a senior at the California Institute of Technology, spent six   
   months engaged in a bit of old-time telescope observing. The work led   
   to some breakthrough research about Saturn's moon Titan, and   
   indirectly led to funding for a new telescope at Caltech's Palomar   
   Observatory.   
      
   Horst, 21, was looking for a part-time job in the summer of  her   
   sophomore year, and was hired by Mike Brown, an associate professor   
   of planetary astronomy. Brown and graduate student Antonin Bouchez   
   knew there had been previous evidence of "weather" on Titan in the   
   form of clouds. But that evidence was elusive. "Someone would look   
   one year and think they saw a cloud, then look the next year and not   
   see a cloud," explains Brown. "What we were after was a way to look   
   at Titan, night after night after night."   
      
   The problem, of course, is that all of the large telescopes like Keck   
   are incredibly busy, booked by astronomers from around the world who   
   use the precious time for their own line of research.  So Brown and   
   Bouchez knew that obtaining large amounts of time for a single   
   project like this was not going to happen.   
      
   The solution: Use an old teaching telescope--the hoary 14-inch   
   Celestron telescope located on top of Caltech's Robinson Lab--to do   
   cutting edge science that couldn't be done at the largest telescopes   
   in the world, in Hawaii.   
      
   Though the power of the Robinson telescope is weak, and light   
   pollution from Pasadena strong, which prevents imaging the actual   
   clouds, the light reflecting from clouds could be imaged (the more   
   clouds, the more light that's reflected). All that was needed was   
   someone who could come night after night and take multiple images.   
      
   Enter Horst, the self-described "lowly undergraduate."  For months,   
   Horst spent her evenings in Robinson. "I did the setup, which   
   involved a wheel that contained four light filters," she explains.   
   Each filter would capture a different wavelength of light. Software   
   switched the filters; all she had to do, says Horst, was to orientate   
   and focus the telescope.   
      
   Now, modern-day astronomers have it relatively easy when using their   
   telescope time. Sure they're up all night, but they sit on a   
   comfortable chair in a warm room, hot coffee close at hand, and do   
   their observing through a computer monitor that's connected to a   
   telescope.   
      
   Not Horst. She did it the old way, in discomfort. "A lot of times in   
   December or January I'd go in late at night, and it would be   
   freezing," says Horst, who runs the 800-meter for  the Caltech track   
   team. "I'd wrap myself up in blankets." Horst spent hours in the   
   dark, since the old dome itself had to be dark. "I couldn't even   
   study," she says, "although sometimes I tried to read by the light of   
   the moon."   
      
   A software program written by Bouchez plotted the light intensity   
   from each image on a graph. When a particular image looked promising,   
   Bouchez contacted Brown. As a frequent user of the Keck Observatory,   
   which is powerful enough to take an image of the actual clouds, Brown   
   was able to call colleagues who were using the Keck that night and   
   quickly convince them that something exciting was going on. "It only   
   took about ten minutes to get a quick image of Titan," says Brown.   
   "The funny part was having to explain to them that we knew there were   
   clouds because we had seen the evidence in our 14-inch telescope in   
   the middle of the L.A. basin."   
      
   The result was "Direct Detection of Variable Tropospheric Clouds Near   
   Titan's South Pole," which appeared in the December 19 journal   
   Nature. It included this acknowledgement: "We thank . . . S. Horst   
   for many nights of monitoring Titan in the cold."   
      
   The paper has helped Brown obtain the funding to build a new  24-inch   
   custom-built telescope. It will be placed in its own building atop   
   Palomar Mountain, on the grounds of Caltech's existing observatory.   
   It's also roboticized; Brown will control the scope from Pasadena via   
   a computer program he has written.   
      
   He'll use it for further observation of Titan and for other imaging,   
   as well, such as fast-moving comets. "Most astronomy is big," notes   
   Brown; "big scopes looking at big, unchanging things, like galaxies.   
   I like to look at changing things, which led to this telescope."   
      
   What really made this project unique, though, according to Brown, is   
   the Robinson scope. "Sarah was able to do something with this little   
   telescope in Pasadena that no one in the world, on any of their   
   larger professional telescopes on high, dark mountaintops, had been   
   able to do," he says. "Sometimes a good idea and stubbornness are   
   better than the largest telescope in town."   
      
   For Horst, while the work wasn't intellectually challenging--"a   
   trained monkey could have done it," she says with a laugh--it was,   
   nonetheless, "a cool project. Everything here is so theoretical and   
   tedious, and so classroom orientated. So in that way it was a nice   
   experience and reminded me what real science was about."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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