Daniel LaRocca of Palatine, Ill., Kyle Connour ’15 and Chelsea Davitt ’14, both of Bloomington all made precise observations of asteroids resulting in the designation of the University’s Mark Evans Observatory as an official observing site.   Under the direction of Chair and Professor of Physics Linda French, the three also installed a new telescope and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera at the observatory.

Daniel also worked with Prof. Linda French, studying the properties of trojan asteroids at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. He is the co-author of the papers titled ” A Rotation Study of Jovian Trojan Asteroids” , by L.M. French, R.D. Stephens, L.H. Wasserman, D. Coley, D.A. Rohl, D. La Rocca, N. Jaggi and S.M. Lederer, and “A Troop of Trojans:  Photometry of 24 Jovian Trojan Asterioids”, by L.M. French, R.D. Stephens, D.C. Coley, L.H. Wasserman, F.Vilas, and D.M. La Rocca.

Chelsea Davitt ’14, Daniel LaRocca ’13 and Kyle Connour ’15 pose with the new telescope in the Mark Evans Observatory.