Idea

University of Colorado Boulder

One-line summary: CU Boulder is the flagship of the CU system, sits at 5,300 ft at the base of the iconic Flatirons (the same Fountain Formation sandstone you see at Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods), and is a working space-science campus — Fiske Planetarium, the Sommers-Bausch Observatory with Friday-night public telescope observing, the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics (LASP) that operates active NASA missions, and 20+ astronaut alumni including Scott Carpenter (Mercury 7). Plus the CU Museum of Natural History, Old Main (1876), and the Chautauqua Park trailhead at the south edge of campus.

University of Colorado Boulder

One-line summary: CU Boulder is the flagship of the CU system, sits at 5,300 ft at the base of the iconic Flatirons (the same Fountain Formation sandstone you see at Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods), and is a working space-science campus — Fiske Planetarium, the Sommers-Bausch Observatory with Friday-night public telescope observing, the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics (LASP) that operates active NASA missions, and 20+ astronaut alumni including Scott Carpenter (Mercury 7). Plus the CU Museum of Natural History, Old Main (1876), and the Chautauqua Park trailhead at the south edge of campus.

Scope note: this template covers steps 1–3 of the adventures pipeline (identify, support Maxine's research, shape goals). The deliverable webpage

video at step 6 is Maxine's own work — don't scaffold it here.

Links & Maps

Official:

CU Boulder visitor page: https://www.colorado.edu/visit
CU Museum of Natural History: https://www.colorado.edu/cumuseum/
Fiske Planetarium: https://www.colorado.edu/fiske/
Sommers-Bausch Observatory: https://www.colorado.edu/sbo/
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP): https://lasp.colorado.edu/
CU Boulder Heritage Center (Old Main): https://www.colorado.edu/heritagecenter/
Chautauqua Park: https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/chautauqua-park
Open Space and Mountain Parks (Flatirons trails): https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/open-space-and-mountain-parks

Maps:

CU Boulder campus map: https://www.colorado.edu/map
Google Maps — CU Museum: https://maps.google.com/?q=CU+Museum+of+Natural+History,+Boulder,+CO
Google Maps — Fiske Planetarium: https://maps.google.com/?q=Fiske+Planetarium,+Boulder,+CO
Google Maps — Chautauqua Park: https://maps.google.com/?q=Chautauqua+Park,+Boulder,+CO

Reference & background:

Wikipedia, University of Colorado Boulder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Colorado_Boulder
LASP missions list (currently and historically operated by CU): https://lasp.colorado.edu/missions/
Wikipedia, Flatirons (Boulder): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatirons
Scott Carpenter (CU alum, Mercury Seven, Aurora 7): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Carpenter
Wikipedia, Sommers-Bausch Observatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sommers%E2%80%93Bausch_Observatory
NASA SORCE mission (LASP-operated): https://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/
NASA MAVEN mission (Mars, LASP-led PI): https://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/
NASA Juno mission JEDI / instrument involvement: https://lasp.colorado.edu/juno/

Must-See / Big Items

Ranked by payoff. The space-science thread (Fiske + Sommers-Bausch + LASP) is the CU-distinctive headline; the museum is the broad-base anchor; the Flatirons are the geology bridge.

Sommers-Bausch Observatory — Friday-night open house — the single biggest reason to time the trip carefully. CU's working teaching observatory on top of the Duane Physics building has three operating research-grade telescopes: a 16-inch Cassegrain, an 18-inch Cassegrain (Boller & Chivens), and a 24-inch Cassegrain (the largest). Open to the public most Friday evenings during the academic year (dark-sky timing varies — 8:00 p.m. winter, 9:00 p.m. summer). Free. Undergraduate astronomy volunteers operate the telescopes and answer questions. Targets depend on the night — Moon, planets, double stars, globular clusters, planetary nebulae — but Maxine will see something through a real research-class telescope and talk to a working astronomy student. Weather-dependent: cancelled if clouded out. Check the calendar morning-of.
Fiske Planetarium — one of the larger university planetariums in the U.S., 65-foot dome, Megastar IIA-X star projector + full-dome digital projection (Sky-Skan Definiti system). Public shows on weekends + evenings; offerings range from classical "current night sky" tours to fulldome music shows. The "current sky tonight" shows are gold — a working astronomy educator narrating the actual sky over Boulder that night. Schedule shows online before arrival.
LASP — Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU East Campus, ~2 mi from main campus) — CU operates real NASA missions from this building. LASP is currently flight ops for or major science lead on:
- MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, orbiting Mars since 2014; LASP-built and LASP-led)
- MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission — 4 spacecraft formation flying in Earth's magnetosphere)
- IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, sun observatory)
- JUNO (instrument package — JEDI and others)
- CYGNSS (hurricane-monitoring constellation)
- AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere)
- Previously: SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, 2003–2020)
Most days, the public can visit only the lobby — there's a small display about current missions and you can sometimes see operations through windows. A few times a year LASP hosts public open houses with mission-control tours, science demos, real-engineer Q&A. Time the trip to one of these if at all possible. Check the LASP calendar starting 3+ months ahead.
CU Museum of Natural History (Henderson Building) — strong paleontology (especially Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway and Colorado Plateau fossils), good mineralogy, and Anthropology galleries with particularly strong Southwest pueblo and Plains material. The CU Anthropology collection has been the subject of ongoing NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) repatriation work — read the signage and observe how the museum currently presents items still in collection. Free.
Old Main (1876) — the original CU building, the only building on the original 80 acres of the 1876 campus. Now houses the Heritage Center (a small museum of CU history) and university administrative offices. The building is itself a National Register property. Stand on the front steps and notice the direct sightline to the Flatirons — the building was sited deliberately on this axis. The Heritage Center has memorabilia of notable CU alumni including Scott Carpenter's spaceflight artifacts. Limited hours.
The Flatirons — Chautauqua Park & First/Second Flatiron trailhead — the Flatirons are eroded fins of the Fountain Formation, a Pennsylvanian-to-Permian (~300 Ma) red arkosic sandstone uplifted to a near-vertical angle during the Laramide Orogeny (the same mountain-building event that pushed up the modern Rockies, ~70–50 Ma). The same rock unit forms Red Rocks outside Morrison and Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. The Chautauqua Park trailhead is at the south edge of CU; a short hike (~1 mi) gets you up to the base of the First Flatiron, where you can touch the rock and see the bedding. A longer hike (Royal Arch trail, ~3.4 mi round trip with 1,400 ft elevation gain) takes you behind the Flatirons to the natural sandstone arch. Crucial geology field site — the Fountain Formation thread runs through three other Colorado adventures.
Norlin Library and the Norlin Quadrangle — the central architectural set piece of campus. CU's architectural identity is "Tuscan Vernacular Revival," developed by architect Charles Z. Klauder starting in 1917. Rustic red-sandstone walls + red-tile roofs — the design was chosen explicitly to harmonize with the Flatirons backdrop. Walk the Quadrangle; the design language is consistent across decades and the result is one of the visually most coherent American university campuses.
CU's astronaut alumni walk — informally, there are tributes scattered around campus. The Heritage Center in Old Main has the most concentrated material. CU has produced 20+ astronauts, including:
- Scott Carpenter (Mercury 7, Aurora 7, 1962 — the 4th American in space; CU degree)
- Jim Voss (5 shuttle missions, ISS Expedition 2)
- Steve Swanson (3 shuttle missions, ISS commander)
- Loren Acton (Spacelab 2, 1985)
- Vance Brand (Apollo-Soyuz 1975, plus shuttle commands)
- Plus current and recent astronauts. This is the direct bridge from nasa-jsc.md: NASA's astronauts come from somewhere, and Colorado is one of the major somewheres.
Buffalo statue / "Ralphie" tradition / Folsom Field — CU's mascot Ralphie is a live bison; she runs onto the field at the start of football games. Folsom Field itself is a 50,000-seat venue and the highest-elevation FBS football stadium. Not a "research" stop but worth a 10-minute photo if you're walking past.
University Hill ("The Hill") — the commercial strip just west of campus along 13th St — the classic college-town stretch of cheap restaurants, coffee shops, and bookstores. Lunch here. The Sink (1923-vintage burger joint, famous for President Obama having eaten there in 2012) is the anchor; Innisfree Poetry Bookstore is a destination in its own right.

Stretch goals (do if time allows):

Wesley A. Brown Aspen Center for Physics — a working think tank for theoretical physics next to campus (closed to walk-ins, but you can see the building).
CU Boulder Center for Astrophysics & Space Astronomy (CASA) — a research wing of the LASP / Astrophysics complex; mostly closed but architecturally interesting.
Macky Auditorium — 1909 stone building, performance space; if a free lunchtime concert is happening, it's worth a stop.
NIST Boulder Labs (~3 mi NW) — National Institute of Standards and Technology; runs the NIST-F2 atomic clock and other US-time-keeping work. Public tours only on rare open-house days; if you can time one, it's a serious bonus venue. Pair with the LASP visit thematically (federal Big Science in Boulder).
Boulder Creek Path — the multi-use trail follows Boulder Creek through campus; nice walk back from CU Museum to lunch.

Research angles for Maxine

The research is hers — list questions to investigate and sources to start from, not answers. Pitch above grade level.

Hook into Maxine's current interests: _(ask before finalizing — what is she into right now? bend the questions to that. If she's currently on a space / astronomy kick, push the LASP missions + the astronaut-alumni thread + Fiske

SBO. If it's geology, push the Fountain Formation Flatirons hike + tie to Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods. If it's anthropology / history of science, push the CU Museum's NAGPRA repatriation work. If it's writing or visual arts, push the Klauder architectural unity + the campus-as-designed-object analysis.)_

Questions worth chasing:

Science:
- Pick one LASP mission — MAVEN, MMS, IRIS, JUNO instruments, CYGNSS, AIM — and answer in depth: what's it measuring, what science question does it answer, what's its orbit, what's its instrument package, when does it end? Read the mission's LASP page + at least one published paper from the science team.
- MAVEN specifically: Mars' atmosphere is ~1% of Earth's surface pressure. MAVEN's job is to characterize how the atmosphere is lost to space (primarily through solar-wind-driven ion escape from the upper atmosphere). Why doesn't Earth lose its atmosphere the same way? (Answer: magnetic field; Mars lost its planetary dynamo ~4 Ga ago.) Trace the inference: how does MAVEN measure ion escape rate, and how does the modern rate translate backward to an estimate of Mars' total atmospheric loss over 4 billion years?
- What's a research-grade telescope, exactly? At Sommers-Bausch you'll look through 16-, 18-, or 24-inch reflectors. What does "16-inch" refer to (primary mirror diameter)? Why does aperture matter (light-gathering proportional to D², resolving power proportional to D)? At what aperture do you stop seeing improvement (atmospheric "seeing" limits typical ground-based telescopes to ~1 arcsec without adaptive optics)?
- The Fountain Formation — Pennsylvanian-Permian (~300 Ma) red arkosic sandstone. Arkose has high feldspar content (>25%), which tells you it weathered from a granitic source rapidly and was buried before the feldspar could break down to clay — i.e., it's "immature" sandstone. What does that say about the climate and tectonics of the source region 300 Ma ago? (Active mountain building, cool/dry climate.) Then trace the geologic history: deposition ~300 Ma → quiet sedimentary cover for 230 million years → uplift and tilt during the Laramide Orogeny ~70–50 Ma → erosion to expose the fins we see today.
- At 5,300 ft Boulder altitude: how does the partial pressure of O2 here compare to Austin (~500 ft)? Why does Boulder host the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center's distance-running program (at higher Colorado Springs)? Pure altitude training math.
- Boulder weather: Chinook winds, downslope wind storms. Boulder is famous for occasional 100+ mph downslope wind events in winter. What's the physics — why does air accelerate down the lee side of mountains? (Mountain-wave dynamics, lee waves, hydraulic-jump-style flow.)
History:
- CU was founded 1876, the same year Colorado became a state. What did the original campus look like (just Old Main on 80 acres of prairie)? Compare to today: ~35,000 students, ~1,200 acres. What were the major expansion eras?
- Charles Z. Klauder's Tuscan Vernacular Revival — adopted 1917 for the entire campus, executed across decades. Why is the architecture so unified at CU when most American universities are a mess of styles? What was Klauder responding to — Boulder's setting, the Flatirons, the climate? Compare to the architectural unity of Stanford (Romanesque sandstone) or Princeton (Collegiate Gothic).
- The CU astronaut pipeline — why specifically does CU produce so many astronauts? Tied to: (a) the LASP space-science research footprint, (b) the aerospace engineering program (top-10 ranked), (c) proximity to Lockheed Martin / Ball Aerospace / Northrop Grumman in the Boulder corridor, (d) the Air Force Academy ~85 mi south. Trace one specific alumnus's path from CU undergrad to astronaut selection.
- NCAR Mesa Lab and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (own doc, ncar-mesa-lab.md) is administered by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium with CU as a founding member. The history of CU + NCAR + LASP + the Boulder-area federal labs is the story of how Boulder became "Atmospheric Science Mecca." Trace the federal funding decisions (Eisenhower era, IGY 1957–58) that set this in motion.
- NAGPRA at CU — the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) requires federally-funded museums to inventory and repatriate Native American cultural items and ancestral remains. CU Museum has been actively repatriating for 30+ years; some material is still in collection. Read the museum's current NAGPRA statement and CU's repatriation reports. What does the museum currently say about objects still held? How does the signage acknowledge the ongoing process?
Writing:
- The LASP mission webpages are themselves a writing form — concise, technical, jargon-dense, link-heavy, designed for both scientists and the press. Compare a LASP MAVEN page to a popular-press writeup of the same mission (Sky & Telescope, Scientific American). What's lost in translation? What's added?
- Pick one Apollo-era CU astronaut (Scott Carpenter is the most famous) and reconstruct his Boulder-to-orbit path: undergraduate years, military pilot training, Naval Test Pilot School, NASA selection. Then read Carpenter's For Spacious Skies (autobiography). What was his Boulder-shaped point of view?
- Sit through a Fiske Planetarium show and then write the same script, your way — same celestial content, your prose voice. Compare yours to what they said.
- The CU Heritage Center has 1876–1880 student letters in its archive. Pick one and transcribe a paragraph; how was the prose different from a 2026 college student's text message? What changes about the relationship to the institution?
Math:
- Aperture math: the 24-inch Sommers-Bausch reflector has 4× the diameter of a 6-inch hobbyist scope. How much more light does it gather? (Area ratio = 4² = 16×.) What's the theoretical resolving power (Rayleigh criterion: θ = 1.22 × λ / D — at λ = 550 nm, D = 24 in / 0.61 m, θ in arcseconds)?
- MAVEN orbit: ~150 km × ~6,200 km Mars-centric elliptical orbit, period ~4.5 hours. Apply Kepler's third law: T² = (4π² / GM) × a³, where M is Mars' mass (~6.4×10²³ kg). Compute a from T and check.
- CU Boulder's astronaut alumni count: 20+ out of roughly 350 total NASA astronauts since 1959. That's ~6%. If CU's enrollment has averaged ~25,000–35,000 over those decades, what's the per-student astronaut rate, and how does that compare to the entire U.S. college-aged population? (CU is producing astronauts at maybe 100–1,000× the national base rate. The selection effect is enormous.)
- Fountain Formation thickness at the Flatirons: the tilted fins exposed at Chautauqua are ~2,000 ft thick across the dip slope. The beds dip at ~30–55° east. Use trigonometry to estimate the true stratigraphic thickness of the formation (always less than the visible map distance because of the dip).
- Hiking math, Chautauqua to First Flatiron base: ~0.7 mi horizontal, ~500 ft vertical gain. What's the average grade? Compare to typical interstate-highway maximum grade (~6%) and railroad-grade limit (~2%).
Art:
- Klauder's Tuscan Vernacular Revival at CU — sketch one campus building (Macky Auditorium, Norlin Library, or any of the residence halls) and analyze the design vocabulary: red sandstone walls, terracotta-tile pitched roofs, low arcades, courtyards. Find a Tuscan source the design is borrowing from (the actual Tuscany region's vernacular farmhouses + small towns).
- CU's public sculpture and outdoor art — there are several major works on campus. Find at least three. Photograph each. Pick the one you'd defend if someone tried to remove it.
- Compare the Boulder Flatirons as a natural sculpture (300-million-year-old eroded sandstone fins) to Red Rocks Amphitheatre as a human-modified version of the same rock (where the Fountain Formation is the seating-bowl walls) to Garden of the Gods (where erosion has carved more fantastical shapes). Three sites, one rock unit, three completely different visual outcomes. Sketch each.
- Mission patches for LASP-led missions — like NASA mission patches, but academic. Find the MAVEN patch and the MMS patch; analyze the symbolism.

Starting sources (not exhaustive — she'll find more):

LASP mission pages (start with MAVEN and MMS): https://lasp.colorado.edu/missions/
Fiske Planetarium upcoming shows: https://fiske.colorado.edu/
Sommers-Bausch Observatory open-house calendar: https://www.colorado.edu/sbo/
CU Heritage Center / CU alumni notable: https://www.colorado.edu/heritagecenter/
Scott Carpenter, For Spacious Skies (autobiography, 2002).
USGS Geologic Map of Boulder Quadrangle (Fountain Formation context): https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/
USGS, "Geologic history of the Front Range": https://pubs.usgs.gov/
Klauder campus architecture history: search "Charles Klauder CU Boulder" in CU Heritage Center publications.
CU Museum NAGPRA Office: https://www.colorado.edu/cumuseum/about/nagpra-office

Observable field goals

Goals Maxine can verify or document in the field at step 5 (confirm & document). Concrete things to look at, count, measure, identify, or photograph — not vague "learn about X."

Sommers-Bausch Observatory Friday night (if not clouded out): look through at least one of the 16-, 18-, or 24-inch telescopes. Note (a) what object you observed, (b) which telescope, (c) the eyepiece focal length / approximate magnification (ask the volunteer), and (d) one specific observable feature you saw (e.g., Saturn's rings + Cassini Division; Jupiter's bands + Galilean moons; M13 globular cluster resolved into stars).
Fiske Planetarium show: record the title and presenter. Note one specific astronomical fact mentioned in the show that you didn't know going in. Note one thing they showed (visualization, animation) that wouldn't be possible with a traditional star projector alone.
LASP visit (lobby or open-house): photograph the display about the current LASP mission portfolio. Note which missions are currently flying and which are completed. Talk to a staff member if any is available; ask one specific technical question about a current mission and record the answer.
CU Museum of Natural History: find the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway display. Photograph one fossil identified to a specific Colorado collection locality. Note: is the museum's specimen-locality data still accessible to researchers (most U.S. natural-history museums make this information available)?
Old Main: photograph the front of the building. Note any plaque or signage about the building's 1876 date and its role as the original campus. Walk inside if open; visit the Heritage Center.
Chautauqua Park trailhead: Hike at least to the base of the First Flatiron (~1 mi one-way). Touch the rock — note its texture and color. Photograph one bedding plane (the layered sedimentary structure). Estimate the dip angle in degrees by eye, then verify with a compass or a phone-app inclinometer. Pick up no rocks (Boulder OSMP rules — no rock collecting).
Architectural observation: photograph three different CU buildings of different decades. All three should show the Klauder design language (red sandstone, terracotta tile roofs, courtyards or arcades). Note one element that differs between the oldest and the newest.
CU astronaut alumni: find at least one specific tribute on campus (plaque, photo display, named building wing) to a CU astronaut. Photograph it.
The Hill / lunch observation: photograph The Sink (the 1923-vintage burger place). Note one piece of student-graffiti / chalkboard / signage that captures what a current CU student's life looks like in 2026.

Suggested itinerary

This is built as a full one-day Boulder Day that maximizes coverage. The single biggest leverage point is timing to a Friday so that Sommers-Bausch Observatory open house is the evening capstone. The Fiske Planetarium show + a Flatirons hike + the museum fill the day before that. If a LASP open-house day overlaps the trip, restructure the day around the open house.

Friday plan:

9:00 a.m. — Leave Denver hotel. Drive to Boulder.
10:00 a.m. — Arrive Chautauqua Park, hike to the base of the First Flatiron (~1 mi). Mornings have the best light and the trail is busy by 10:30. ~90 min including photos.
11:30 a.m. — Drive 5 min to The Hill; park; lunch (The Sink, or any non-chain spot).
12:45 p.m. — Walk to CU Museum of Natural History. 90 min — but you can be tighter if you want.
2:30 p.m. — Walk across campus to Old Main / Heritage Center; ~45 min.
3:30 p.m. — Drive to LASP (CU East Campus, 10 min). Lobby visit + ask a staff member about current mission status. 30 min.
4:00 p.m. — Drive 3 mi to Celestial Seasonings (see celestial-seasonings.md) — last factory tour of the day. 90 min. Or skip Celestial Seasonings and rest — Maxine will need energy for the observatory tonight.
5:30 p.m. — Dinner in Boulder (Pearl Street pedestrian mall has options).
7:30 p.m. — Arrive Sommers-Bausch Observatory. Park near the Duane Physics building. Confirm the open house is running (weather check on the SBO calendar from your phone before driving over). Bring layers + red flashlight if you have one.
8:00–9:30 p.m. — Observatory open house. Look through every telescope they have running. Ask undergraduate volunteers what they're studying. Maxine's call on when to leave.
9:45 p.m. — Drive back to Denver hotel (~45 min — Friday evening traffic out of Boulder is mild).

Alternative non-Friday plan: Skip the observatory; substitute an evening Fiske Planetarium show (their evening shows run most days). Use the freed afternoon for a longer Flatirons hike (Royal Arch trail, 3.4 mi RT) or for the NCAR Mesa Lab (5 mi away, free, see ncar-mesa-lab.md).

Family roles:

Chris leads: Driving, the LASP-mission / orbital-mechanics conversations, the observatory logistics, pre-loading Maxine with one specific LASP mission to focus on so the visit isn't generic.
Heather leads: The CU Museum / NAGPRA conversation (heavier material), the Klauder architecture conversation, photography of campus buildings, the Heritage Center / astronaut-alumni thread, lunch on The Hill.
Maxine drives: Picks the LASP mission she wants to dive into in advance; picks which Flatirons hike length (short / medium / long); decides whether to ask a specific question of the SBO volunteer (and what); picks the Fiske show if substituting.
Solo vs. both parents: Both parents preferred for the long day. The split is genuine — Chris on space-science, Heather on museum + architecture — and Maxine gets two distinct adult voices to bounce off.

Connections

Combines well with:

ncar-mesa-lab — 5 mi away in south Boulder; the federal atmospheric-science campus that completes the CU+LASP picture. Free, architecturally striking (I.M. Pei designed the building). Half-day add-on.
celestial-seasonings — 3 mi away in Boulder; free factory tour, friendly counterpoint to the heavy-science venues. See celestial-seasonings.md.
red-rocks — 30 mi south; the same Fountain Formation that makes the Flatirons makes the Red Rocks amphitheater walls. Direct geologic continuity. Strong day-2 of a Boulder/Denver split.
dinosaur-ridge — 20 mi south, Cretaceous rocks now exposed at the Front Range; pair with the Flatirons hike for a complete sedimentary-history walk through Front Range geology.
garden-of-the-gods — 80 mi south, in Colorado Springs; same Fountain Formation again, eroded differently. Trio with Flatirons + Red Rocks = the full Fountain Formation tour.
nasa-jsc — the human-spaceflight side of what LASP's astronaut alumni feed into. CU produces astronauts; NASA JSC trains them and operates them.
us-air-force-academy — 80 mi south; the other Colorado astronaut-feeder institution (the USAFA has produced even more astronauts than CU, on a per-class basis).
denver-museum-nature-science — Denver's natural-history museum, larger collection than CU Museum but less geographically focused on Colorado.
ut-austin — comparison university for Maxine: similar-scale flagship, very different architectural identity, different research portfolio.

Feeds into home projects / future adventures:

A LASP-mission research project: pick one mission, track its science output for 6 months, present what's been learned. Maxine can pull preprints from arXiv.
A serious Friday-night-astronomy habit at home — a 6-inch reflector is a reasonable next step after seeing what's possible at SBO. Pair with software like Stellarium.
The Fountain Formation thread: a multi-trip geology unit chaining Flatirons + Red Rocks + Garden of the Gods + the Maroon Bells (Maroon Formation, a similar age unit, near Aspen).
Future astronomy trips: McDonald Observatory in West Texas (the Texas-side counterpart to SBO, with much larger research telescopes); Kitt Peak in Arizona; eventually the Mauna Kea telescopes in Hawaii.
University research-visit pipeline: as Maxine gets older, CU's Pre-Collegiate Science Initiative + Summer Astronomy Program could become real summer experiences.

University of Colorado Boulder

Links & Maps

Must-See / Big Items

Research angles for Maxine

Observable field goals

Suggested itinerary

Connections

Open questions / still to research (Chris's side)