When Star-Gazing Gets Technical
Cal State East Bay is the proud owner of a new global science tool — meet the undergraduates using and helping to build it
Assistant Professor Amy Furniss has taken her interest in the study of very high energy astroparticle physics to new heights.
Rather than simply interpreting cosmic phenomena through her association with VERITAS (the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System based in Arizona), she’s made an investment with her faculty startup funding from Cal State East Bay to purchase one of two mirrors for a new telescope at the observatory site in Tucson. The telescope, the best of its kind in the world, will be used to gather and share data on cosmic events with scientists across the globe.
“There are just a few other instruments like this worldwide,” Furniss says. “To corroborate scientific findings, we use VERITAS to communicate with NASA space telescopes so they can repoint their direction and we can all try to catch the same observations when an event occurs that requires further investigation.”