IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) Star Sensor Calibration and Astrometric Transformation
Morgan O'Neill, a physics major and honors student, spent the summer conducting research at the Space Research Center in Warsaw, Poland. Her work on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, which launched in October 2008, began the summer after her freshman year and culminated with her senior thesis.
"This has been such an amazing summer and it has happened way too fast," she said after returning from Poland. "It's been a perfect amount of time and I'm thrilled that I was able to do so much work and see so much of Poland. I have so many stories!"
Morgan enjoyed working with her mentors and said she learned a lot from them, "not just about physics and programming, but about the culture and history of Poland."
Upon returning to UNH she was glad to be back, but hopes to return to Poland some day and become fluent in Polish. "I gained poor conversational skills while I was there, and it was thrilling to exchange information in another language," she said of the experience.
Morgan was the Tyco Scholar for her year and worked with UNH Physics Professor Eberhard Moebius. She won an award for her research at the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Symposium (ISE) and entered graduate school at M.I.T. in fall 2009.
Photo:?Morgan with her foreign mentor, Dr. Maciej Bzowski (center), and Dr. Marek Hlond (right); both are members of the Polish team with whom Morgan closely worked.
