Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA'S ASTRONOMY CAMP
reach for the stars
MOUNT LEMMON, TUCSON, ARIZONA
We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our
backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or
only just happened.
—Mark Twain, American humorist, writer, and lecturer
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Amateurs can't exactly take on particle physics or molecular genetics, but when it comes
to astronomy, there's not much everyday people can't do—given the right telescopes and an
enthusiastic teacher. Maybe that's why the University of Arizona's Astronomy Camp has be-
come so popular. In these three- to four-day programs for adults and seven- to eight-day pro-
grams for teens, stargazers find themselves observing, photographing, and electronically ima-
ging various celestial objects through professional-grade telescopes, devising theories on glob-
ular clusters, and identifying near-Earth asteroids that only astronomy professors usually know
about.
The enthusiastic teacher, Don McCarthy, the University of Arizona professor who heads
the programs, is so much fun (he has a whole collection of music about stars—for example,
from
Annie, Phantom of the Opera,
and
Cats)
and has such a knack for explaining complex
theories that past campers keep coming back year after year. In fact, Lisa Roubal, codirector
