OJAI : Teen Scientists Keep Track of Cosmos

Observing the solar eclipse in Ojai was a break in a rigorous routine last week for 38 teen-agers who are calculating the cosmos for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Their six-week mission: To explore new subjects by day and track the orbits of tiny asteroids in the dark of night.

Lured by tales of an explosive Mad Scientist Show and no grades or bed checks, high school students nationwide vie for limited spaces each year in the Summer Science/Young Scholars Program, now in its 33rd year at the Thacher School.

The private prep school, perched along Ojai’s foothills, has a prime nighttime view for its two observatories and has inspired such sponsors as the National Science Foundation, Pomona College, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology to help fund the course. It also receives strong support from alumni who have become scientists.

Only students with high motivation and Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, solid math and science backgrounds and teachers’ recommendations qualify for the program, said Leo P. Connolly, program director for seven years and chairman of the physics department at Cal State San Bernardino.

Some scholarships are available for the course, which costs $1,500 for tuition, room and board. The students, mostly high school seniors, forgo television for six weeks to receive concentrated lessons in celestial mechanics, spherical trigonometry, vector analysis, plate photography and computer languages, among other disciplines.

“They said it was fast-paced in the brochure, and it is,” said Pauline Chow, 17, of Cherry Hill, N.J. “You can go to all kinds of summer programs anywhere, but here you’re not just looking at the stars, it has a purpose.”

Tom Steiman-Cameron of NASA-Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area is teaching in the program for the first time this year. “We really saturate them, but it’s amazing how rapidly they soak it up,” he said. “I’ve already taught a half semester of college physics in two weeks.”

At night, the students team up for their 9 p.m.-to-3 a.m. telescope shifts. They track asteroids such as Elektra, Antigone and Juno, three of the 4,000 that are known, but ones that are much smaller than Earth’s moon.

The young scholars shoot and develop photographic plates of these so-called “minor planets,” then spend up to four days calculating their orbital progress. The observations are entered into a large data bank at the Smithsonian observatory in Cambridge, Mass., Connolly said.

“A lot of them have never seen a dark sky, the Milky Way or even looked through a telescope before coming here,” Connolly said. “We have to force them to go to the beach for a break. They get so engrossed they don’t want to leave campus.”