EarthScope Orientation Week Kick-starts a Busy Summer for Student Interns

The week began with an informal welcome barbecue Sunday night at the home of Rick Aster (NMT Earth and Environmental Science).  Here, Rick and Michael Hubenthal of EarthScope listen to the students as they introduce themselves to the rest of the attendees.

Student Calvin Johnson introduces himself to his fellow interns.

By Monday morning, the interns were busy installing fully-functional broadband seismometer stations at three locations near the EPIC. Here, Noor Ghouse levels a broadband sensor.

Program director Michael Hubenthal points to something of interest as the students finish their broadband station.

One of three broadband installation teams, happy to have installed their first working station.

A second team of interns, installing their broadband station.  The EPIC appears in the background.

 Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University lectures interns on the basics of seismological science.

Each intern received a copy of An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes, and Earth Structure by Seth Stein and Michael Wysession as part of their course materials.

Katie Foster (U. of Wyoming & Program Alumnus) leads the interns in a class session on data acquisition techniques.

Eric Makarewicz (blue shirt) and Greg Chavez (kneeling), both from the EPIC, coach the interns on proper operation of a Geometrics multi-channel seismic instrument.

Here, intern Rachel Pettit prepares to deliver a mighty blow with a sledgehammer.  This impact will create an active impulse, to be measured by a group of distinct seismic sensors.

Orientation week included several field opportunities for all the student participants.

The interns visit the Quebradas for a close-up inspection of the Magdalena Fault.

On the last Friday of Orientation Week, all participants gathered at San Lorenzo Canyon (north of Socorro) for an old-fashioned campfire, barbecue, sing-along and story-telling.  Here, guest speaker Benjamin Radford, author and deputy editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer, explores the canyon area.

The Interns fan out out for a pre-dinner hike at San Lorenzo Canyon.

Ecstatic to be back in their native habitat, several of the interns relax among the rocky crags of the Baca formation.

In San Lorenzo Canyon, the Baca Formation consists of brick-red, cobble to boulder conglomerates, dominated by granitic clasts.

At the post-dinner campfire, author Ben Radford talks to the attendees about science, pseudoscience, and the legend of the Chupacabra.

Campfire Show-and-Tell:

Ben Radford obtained this specimen, touted as "The Chupacabra," after it was found in the desert near Albuquerque, and reported on several television stations.  This is not the Chupacabra, however, but simply the remains of a dried skate fish, known as a "Jenny Haniver."

Rick Aster (left) and the interns listening attentively as Ben Radford talks about his investigations of the paranormal.