INTERNS IN ACTION – Seven Barnard Students at Hayden Planetarium
August 2002

New York, NY, August 7, 2002—Seven Barnard students – all physics, astronomy, or astrophysics majors – are helping create an online system that will access every astrophysical database in the world and every satellite in space.

Working as interns at the Hayden Planetarium and Rose Center for Earth and Space, part of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, the students make up the majority of the interns constructing the National Virtual Observatory web site, doing everything from HTML coding and JavaScript to developing data retrieval strategies and conducting scientific reseasrch..

The Department of Astrophysics at the Museum received a grant from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Alliance through the National Science Foundation in 2001 to create the system.

The seven students are: Tiffany Christatos ’03, Karina Hamalainen ’04, Kaitlin Kratter ’05, Charlene Kuperstein ’04, Marcia Sanders ’03, Rachel Semple-Shuchter ’03, and Pauline Wang ’04.

"It’s a fantastic opportunity for our students to be working in this newly rebuilt center," says Laura Kay, chair of Barnard’s physics and astronomy department and faculty sponsor for the internship. "We are grateful to Charles Liu for accepting so many of our astronomy and astrophysics majors." Other institutions participating in the program include Penn State University, Vassar College, and Carnegie Mellon University, but none have as many interns as Barnard does.

"They each work on a number of projects," says Charles Liu, one of the planetarium’s astrophysicists and a research scientist in the physics and astronomy department at Barnard. "They all work with scientists, on education-based web design, and so on."

The Department of Astrophysics at the Museum conducts scientific research and brings it to public attention. The interns participate as contributors and as audience. "I tell them," Liu says, "whenever they hit a wall, just to go out into the museum and wander around. They should take it in and see what it has to offer."

The planetarium was reopened in 2000 after the three-year construction of the Rose Center and installation of a new projection system.

The interns call themselves Charlie’s Angels after a television show about policewomen by that name because they work closest with Liu and he constantly talks with them over a speaker phone.

Because their majors tend to progress at a preset pace, the Angels were especially grateful for the opportunity it afforded students at different stages in their degrees to come together, both socially and in an educational environment.

Asked what first interested them in their fields, Kuperstein said she used to watch the stars with her father when she was a child and Christatos volunteered at an observatory in her native Nebraska, "where there are lots and lots of stars." Semple-Shuchter’s and Hamalainen’s interests were solidified by working at Biosphere 2, Columbia’s environmental research and education center in the Arizona desert. All agreed that the Introduction to Astrophysics course, whether taught by Kay or Columbia’s David Helfand, also sparked their interests.

Kratter explained that the expanded course offerings at Columbia in astronomy is advantageous, while Barnard’s smaller department lets students get to know faculty more closely. According to Semple-Shuchter, "Because it’s so small, you know the professors and they know you."
After the internship ends, Sanders, Wang, and Hamalainen will return to the Biosphere. "This will certainly give me a step up into the world of astronomy," said Hamalainen.

Sanders agreed, adding, "It gave me an idea of how much I don’t know."

Semple-Shuchter is not positive she wants to pursue a graduate degree, but is glad she interned at the planetarium. "Being here," she said, "showed me what you can do without going to grad school, but still be part of the field."

Kuperstein added, "It gives you an idea of what people in astrophysics actually do every day."