News releases....

MSUM GRAD TO LAUNCH HER CAREER AT NASA’S KENNEDY SPACE CENTER
What a way to blast off from college.

After graduating next week from Minnesota State University Moorhead, Megan Sawarynski (pronounced Sawrinsky) will start her career as a launch operations engineer at the NASA/Kennedy Space Center.

The MSUM physics major, with construction management and astronomy minors, was one of more than 300 candidates from across the country who applied for the position.
As an employee of Boeing Rocketdyne, the 23-year-old Sawarynsky will be an entry-level engineer working with the main engines of NASA’s Space Shuttle at Kennedy Space Center.

For the Omaha, Neb., native, it’s a dream come true. Since watching the movie “Space Camp” when she was about five years old, Sawarynski said she’s aspired to work in the space industry.

A four-year starter on the Dragon soccer team, she’s a graduate of Ralston High School in Ralston, Neb., and the daughter of Bernie Whitmarsh of Omaha. She has three older brothers now living in Colorado: Jeff, Bryan and Keith.

She’ll begin her new job in early June.

GORE’S FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF,
ALUM TO SPEAK AT MSUM GRADUATION
David Strauss, a 1973 Minnesota State University Moorhead alum who served four years as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, will deliver the commencement address at the university’s spring graduation ceremony at 2 p.m. Friday, May 14 in Nemzek Fieldhouse.

More than 820 students have been invited to receive their degrees that day. About 650 are expected to attend the ceremony.

Strauss is currently a visiting lecturer at the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a lecturer at the Center for the Study of the Congress and the Presidency at American University in Washington, D.C.

After graduating from MSUM magna cum laude with degrees in political science and secondary education, he began his public service career in North Dakota administering federal farm programs as state executive director for the USDA’s Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

Prior to his appointment with the vice president’s staff, he served 13 years in senior management positions in the U.S. Senate.

A reception for parents, family and friends of graduates is scheduled after the ceremony.

“It’s hard to predict,” says Dave Weinrich, coordinator of Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Planetarium.

The last two widely ballyhooed comets—Kohoutek in 1973 and Halley’s in 1986—made amateur sky watchers feel like they were waiting for Godot. Both were about as visible as fly specs.
Early predictions on Comet NEAT (named after the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program that first spotted it on Aug. 24, 2001) is that it will be visible to the naked eye in the western night sky throughout the first three weeks in May.

“The guess is that it will be about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper,” Weinrich said. “From the city, it might look like a small fuzzy ball. But in the country away from city lights, even the tail should be visible.”

The MSUM Regional Science Center will offer viewings of the comet through telescopes and binoculars from 9 to 11 p.m. Thursday, May 13 at its Buffalo River Site, located 15 miles east of Moorhead on Highway 10 adjacent to Buffalo River State Park.

An impressive line-up of Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter will also be visible that night.

Comets, Weinrich said, are basically huge, dirty snowballs, space debris made up of frozen gases, ice and dust. As they approach the Sun, they heat up and the ice boils off, taking with it the rock, gases and dust, forming a tail that can extend tens of millions of miles.
More than 200 have been orbiting the Sun during the past two centuries.

“Just about every decade we get a bright one,” he said. “This could be it. It won’t be as spectacular as Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, but any comet visible to the naked eye, in my opinion, is spectacular.”

The potential for a bright comet show is based on astronomer predictions that Comet NEAT will reach its closest point to the Sun, or perihelion, on May 15, a distance of about 89 million miles.
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The comet,” Weinrich said, “will pass closest to the Earth on May 7, just under 30 million miles away, or about the distance from Earth to Venus at their closest point. It will appear to rise out of the evening twilight during the first week of May and move northward into the constellation Ursa Major by month’s end.”

Look to the west about an hour after sunset, he said, and you should see it earlier in the month. It will be situated left of Venus, sometimes called the evening star, essentially one of the brightest object in the sky.

“Each night it will rise a little higher as it moves away from the Earth along a curved line between Venus in the northwest and Jupiter in the south,” Weinrich said. “On May 25 it should be just to the right of the Moon.”

Like most comets, he said, NEAT is probably a few miles in diameter, a piece of space debris that had been orbiting the Solar System in what’s called the Oort Cloud.

“Something, maybe a star or a gravitational disturbance, pushed this dirty snowball out of the Oort Cloud and it got caught in the inner Solar System,” he said. “We think this is a new comet, one that’s never passed near the Sun before.”

Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) is a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Beginning observations in 1995, NEAT uses automated telescopes to scan the sky for asteroids or comets that come close to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

(Don’t confuse this NEAT comet, designated C/2001 Q4, with another that recently looped around the Sun and was also called NEAT, but designated C2002 V1.)
Weinrich suggests exiting the city limits to see NEAT, away from the glare of metropolitan light pollution. While it will be visible to the naked eye, binoculars, he said, may be the best way to view the comet.