Mara DeRung, MSUM student, presents poster about astronomy education that the Annual Meeting of the AAVSO

Mara DeRung, MSUM student, presents poster about astronomy education that the Annual Meeting of the AAVSO

Mara DeRung, a Sustainability major and Astronomy minor, presented a poster at the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, held Nov 2-4 in Boston, MA. Her presentation “Exoplanet Coding Revisions and Exo-Planet Candidate data” described work done at MSUM over the last three years to make analysis of data taken in support of a NASA mission accessible for non-science majors. Students in an introductory observational astronomy course analyze data taken at MSUM’s observatory to help confirm tentative discoveries of new planets in other solar systems by a NASA satellite.