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12 December 2003

SAS on CNN

by Sheldon Greaves

On December 4, the CNN news program Lou Dobbs Tonight ran a short segment on Lisa Glukhovsky. Readers of the E-Bulletin will know that Lisa was the 17 year-old high school student from New Milford, CT whose science project on near earth asteroids won her top honors at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, along with over $70,000 in scholarships. Lisa did her work at the nearby McCarthy Observatory which was designed, funded, and built by the Western Connecticut Chapter of SAS. Local SAS members also mentored Lisa through her project.

Also interviewed during this segment was Monty Robson, the President of the West Connecticut chapter. It was nice to see underneath his name on the screen "Society for Amateur Scientists", which may well be a media first for SAS.

If you didn't happen to see the segment, here is a transcript:

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One of great mysteries of space, asteroids, millions of mini-planets. But how many are close to the Earth and just how close are they?

Meet the high school senior who's finding out.

Lisa Glukhovsky of New Milford, Connecticut, daughter of Russian immigrants, is lucky. There's an observatory just a few steps from her public high school.

LISA GLUKHOVSKY, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I find astronomy incredibly exciting, especially because there's still so much left to discover.

VILES: But she is also brilliant and she does not give up. For a science project, she set out to measure the distance to near-Earth asteroids. Her theory, if she could view the same asteroid at the same instance from two observatories, she could create a giant triangle, and then using geometry could calculate the distance to the asteroid.

She spent months working out the math, then used the Internet to link observatories in Denmark, the Netherlands and California, but then it took even more time, eight months in all, to see if her system really worked.

GLUKHOVSKY: There was an earthquake in California in the fall of -- in the fall of the year that I started my project. There were also forest fires in California. And I think the worst problem was the bad weather that occurred.

VILES: But then, finally the weather cleared, the images came by e-mail, and lo and behold, the system did work.

GLUKHOVSKY: I wasn't going to give up. But it just -- it takes a lot of patience and perseverance.

VILES: Lisa's measurements of asteroids that are 11 million kilometers from Earth proved to be remarkably accurate.

MONTY ROBSON, SOCIETY FOR AMATEUR SCIENTISTS: Right now, it's an amazing feat that as a high school student, she was able to do this. So I think it's just amazing that she had the fortitude to carry it through and to make such an important and winning project.

VILES: The scientists said Intel agreed. They gave Lisa their highest award for young scientists, and a $50,000 scholarship. She won another scholarship from the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and hopes to attend college in New England.

Peter Viles, CNN, New Milford, Connecticut.