For six days in June, high school students from New Mexico, North Carolina and Minnesota were part of the first ever astrophysics summer camp at the University of Minnesota Morris.
The Kapemni Astrophysics Summer Camp was one of two astrophysics camps organized by the Kapemni Collaboration and funded by the National Science Foundation.
The Kapemni collaboration is a group of scientists from New Mexico Tech, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and the University of Minnesota Morris. The scientists of the camp were faculty and post-doctorate and graduate students from the University of Minnesota campuses in Morris and the Twin Cities.
The 15 students arrived with limited experience but plenty of enthusiasm for astrophysics. Their days were filled with a variety of activities, such as building glow-in-the-dark 3-D constellations, telescopes, model rockets, and mock-up Foxsi's (focusing x-ray solar imagers), and designing space mission badges. They observed particle tracks in the cloud chamber, Fraunhofer lines, sunspots, and spectra, and observed stars, galaxies, and other deep-sky objects in the Morris telescope. They learned about celestial coordinates, gravitational waves, special and general relativity, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and the Big Bang. The camp allowed plenty of time for fun as well, with camp fires, solar-cooked hotdogs, and traveling far. Mentorship, friendship, good conversations, and much laughter filled the days. Campers also learned about Native American mathematics and astronomy, built new friendships across Tribal nations, and received affirmation and mentorship from Indigenous astrophysicists.
One student commented, “it was almost impossible to ever get bored because there was such a large variety of things to learn.”
Another stated, “I realized that I wanted to learn as much as I could. Astrophysics branches out into so many different things, and if I could go to university and study some of these topics I would be overjoyed.”
The Morris camp was the second part of this year's Kapemni astrophysics camps, the first one was held in New Mexico earlier in June. That camp was led by professor Van Romero from New Mexico Tech, and took a group of students into Chaco Canyon, to the Very Large Array Radio Telescope , and the Magdalena Ridge Observatories.
Plans are underway to offer the camp again in 2027 and 2028. Registration will be announced in January on the camp website.
The Kapemni Astrophysics Summer Camps are one of the initiatives of the Kapemni collaboration. The faculty leaders of the Morris camp are Sylke Boyd (Morris), Peter Dolan (Morris), Van Romero (New Mexico Tech), Vuk Mandic (UMTC), and Jim Rock (Duluth). The camp staff includes PhD students Alex Grandados, Cristina Andrade, and Alexis Riggs, and Postdoctoral Fellows Kristopher Cooper and Morgan Stores. UMN Morris students Mahathir Mostafa, Darlene Corte, Mariah Mireles, Florence Romero, Jhoni Uses Many, and Benais Rasmussen served as camp counselors.
Other initiatives of the Kapemni collaboration on the Morris campus include the annual trip to the Twin Cities with the students from the Gateway Program to learn about Native American astronomy and meet with astrophysicists; this year’s trip will be lead by Jim Rock (Dakota and astronomer) on July 25, and include visits to the Wakan Tipi Center in St Paul, Indian Mounds Park, the Bell Museum, and a planetarium show on Dakota and Ojibwe astronomy.
Kapemni Astrophysics Summer Camp
