NEAF Cadets Attend the Astronomy & Space Expo

Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) Expo Cadets Abigail Daniel ’18 and Kris Korzan ’16, along with their PH489 individual research project advisor, Dr. Paula Fekete, attended the NEAF Astronomy and Space Expo held at Rockland Community College in nearby Suffern, NY. As part of their research project, the Cadets are performing visual observations and acquiring astrophotography images in the new West Point Observatory. They visited the expo to be acquainted with the latest astronomy and astrophotography gear available. More than 150 astronomy equipment vendors were represented. In addition to being the largest expo of specialized equipment in the field, NEAF is also a forum for numerous scientific presentations. Cadets attended two of the scientific talks. NEAF talks are given by the most brilliant personalities in the fields of space and astronomy. The first talk was contributed by Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto and it was entitled Mission to Pluto and What Planethood Really Means. The second attended talk was The Confirmation of Gravitational Waves, and it was presented by David Shoemaker, senior research scientist at MIT, director of the Advanced LIGO project. Attendance allowed a great opportunity to cadets and their instructor to enlarge their horizons by attending talks given by researchers at the forefront of science today.