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The 2014 Banff Mountain Film Festival screening took place in a sold-out Schaefer Center on Friday and Saturday
App State Mountaineer baseball took two games of a rainshortened weekend series against UNCG
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TheAppalachianOnline.com
The Appalachian 04.01.14
Appalachian State University’s student news source since 1934
TWO RINGS TO RULE THEM ALL App State professor helps discover first known system of rings around an asteroid Vol. 88, No. 41
by Carl Blankenship Intern News Reporter
A
ppalachian State University professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy professor Joseph Pollock helped aid in the discovery of the first known system of rings around an asteroid. The discovery was published by the European Southern Observatory and Nature on March 26. Pollock was monitoring the asteroid, called Chariklo, from the Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes in Chile. The observatory is part of the SKYNET network of telescopes founded by UNC Chapel Hill. The discovery was made while observing the asteroid during an occultation. Pollock said occultations are the same as solar eclipses. When one object in space obscures another, an occultation occurs. Prior to the discovery, it was known that Chariklo would pass in front of a star. When astronomers noticed smaller occultations before and after the aster-
Photo Courtesy of Joe Pollock
Adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy Joe Pollock sits with a telescope on the observational deck of Rankin Science West.
oid passed in front of the star, the asteroid’s pair of rings were first observed. Pollock said the probability that what was seen were rings is almost certain. “I would put my retirement savings on Chariklo having rings,” he said. Pollock said when he first started working in astronomy, a discovery like this would not have been possible. “Before we had remote, robotic telescopes and the Internet to help with international cooperation discoveries like these simply could not happen,” Pollock
Illustration by Lucie Maquet
said. Pollock said it is interesting to see smaller telescopes being used to make such a landmark discovery. “You hear about these huge telescopes being used now but
Alpha Tau Omega goes bald
this discovery was made using relatively small, low sensitivity telescopes,” Pollock said. Pollock has been a professor at Appalachian for 31 years and said this discovery is the biggest of his career.
“It never occurred to anyone that there would be rings on an asteroid,” Pollock said. “[We are] finding something completely new and not everyone gets a chance to be involved in something like this.”
Finding faith in few numbers by Michael Bragg Editor-in-Chief
Editor’s Note: The following is the first of a two-part series featuring the Latter-day Saints Student Association on campus. A group of students meet every Monday in a building behind campus off Poplar Grove Road with a group of High Country residents of comparable ages. This handful of young adults consider one another brothers and sisters, making up a family of shared values and beliefs at Appalachian State Uni-
versity. These students are Mormons, and they are members of the Latter-day Saints Student Association on campus. These Monday night meetings, known in the Mormon faith as Family Home evenings, a day set aside for families to come together and spend time with one another, serve as a meeting time and place for the LDSSA, which gained recognition as an official campus club in fall 2013. Different chapters of this club exist on several other campuses nationwide.
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Rachel Krauza | The Appalachian
The Alpha Tau Omega fraternity shaved their heads in honor of their brother, Alex Martin, who has been diagnosed with lymphoma.
by Laney Ruckstuhl Assistant News Editor
Brothers from the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity chapter at Appalachian State University are shaving their heads in support of their brother Alex Martin, who has been diagnosed with lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. Of the fraternity’s 43 members, 35 so far have shaved their heads to support Martin as he undergoes chemotherapy treatments at Wake Forest Medical Center. Martin, a senior business major, has withdrawn from the university for the time being, but plans to return in the fall to complete his degree, said ATO president Zac Rogerson. Rogerson said Martin found out he had lymphoma about two weeks ago after driving himself to the hospital. Mar-
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tin originally believed he had pneumonia, but after undergoing a series of tests, a tumor was discovered. Martin has an approximately 90 percent chance of survival, Rogerson said. The decision to shave their heads was made among 35 of the brothers. “Once we found out it was definitely cancer, we all decided we were going to do it,” he said. “It just started a domino effect. We can’t take away everything, but we can at least show him we have support.” Rogerson said although Martin doesn’t know it yet, the chapter has also formed an alliance with St. Baldrick’s foundation. The organization’s Shavees go bald and ask for sponsorship and donation from friends and family, which will then go to a cancer patient.
SEE FRATERNITY PAGE 3
Michael Bragg | The Appalachian
Juniors nutrition major Kaitlyn McIver (left) and anthropology major Alisha LaDue (right) are the vice president and president, respectively, of the LDSSA chapter at Appalachian State University. The two helped re-establish the organization as an official club last semester.
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