Amelia was born and raised in Honolulu, and graduated from Iolani School in 2023. She currently attends the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for Mechanical Engineering, where she’s involved in a student-run business-engineering consulting firm. In her free time, Amelia enjoys spending time with friends and family, exploring new places, and shopping.
Home Island: O’ahu
High School:Iolani School
Institution when accepted: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Project title: The Design and Fabrication of the Camera Mount for the Science Camera on the Nickel Telescope
Project Site: University of California Observatories, Santa Cruz, California
Mentors: Pavl Zachary & Kyle Westfall
Project Abstract:
The Nickel Telescope, located at Lick Observatory in Northern California, is a 40-inch reflecting telescope used for general research, sky surveys, and to narrow down prospective celestial objects and phenomena, saving countless hours of time on larger telescopes. The current science camera on the telescope is a CCD camera that requires cryogenic cooling by liquid nitrogen. Due to its age and degrading performance, the current camera will be replaced with a modern, water-cooled CCD camera that requires less maintenance. Thus, a mount for the new camera is needed, and the goal of this project is to design and fabricate a mount to attach the camera to the telescope. The design requirements for the mount include: 1) positioning the camera at the correct height to optimize image focus; 2) preventing stray light from reaching the CCD camera; 3) easy removal from the telescope to allow staff to perform routine maintenance and change-out instruments; and 4) must be manufacturable in-house at the University of California Observatories (UCO) machine shops. To facilitate this, each component of the mount was designed to account for the physical limitations of the UCO machines. With these requirements in mind, the mount was created using computer-aided design in SolidWorks, approved by a UCO research and development engineer, and fabricated in-house using aluminum.