Maxwell Cassady Moe -1st place

Max is the first-place NYAA winner. He is a junior at Heritage Christian High School in Fort Collins, Colorado. Max will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Astronomical League's 56th annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee this July, where he will receive a Meade 10-inch LX-200 telescope donated by Meade Instruments Corporation. In addition, Max will receive a lifetime pass to the McDonald Observatory, compliments of the University of Texas. In addition, he will be presented a League plaque at the convention.

He has been involved in a variety of activities during his high school career, including
being a member of his school's math club and participating in local and regional math competitions. He is currently enrolled in advanced placement physics and calculus.

Max's research project was entitled Demographic and Atmopsheric Effects on the Quality of the Night Sky. To quote from the purpose section of his work, "Understanding the factors that damage the sky might lead us to predict its quality in the future. And maybe before it's too late, we may implement plans that will prevent the destruction of the night sky near observatories and the remaining dark-sky sites in America."

He has built a dark-sky meter based on the design by Gote Flodqvist, which earned a third-place prize at a recent Rocky Mountain Star Stare. This device can be used to study the effects of light pollution and indirectly measure atmospheric effects on the quality of the night sky.

Max has enjoyed his active involvement with local and regional astronomy activities since receiving his first telescope as a Christmas present four years ago. He is a member and current vice-president of the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society. He was selected to attend the University of Arizona's 2002 Advanced Teen Astronomy Camp, where he researched the accretion disk of SS433 and globular clusters in M31. His short story entitled "The Forgotten Scientific Revolution," which relates the struggles of a young and frustrated scientist who worked with Johannes Kepler, won one of two awards at the camp for best application essay.

He is an avid amateur observer, having observed all of the Messier objects. In addition, he earned the Astronomical League's Herschel 400 Award at age 16. He has attended numerous star parties in the past several years. Max owns an eight-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, and he has used star-hopping with star charts and maps to find all of the objects that he has seen. He likes to keep detailed records of objects he observed, and has sketched many of those objects. When Max has his telescope set up at his home, his neighbors are always welcome to come by and take a look. He has made presentations at his club's monthly meetings and set up star parties for his high school classmates.

Max plans to pursue a graduate degree in astrophysics and a lifetime career with "my eyes to the skies."

Sabrina Curie Snell-2nd Place

Sabrina, a senior at School without Walls in Washington, D.C. has been awarded second- place honors. She has won a Meade ETX 125 telescope with computer controls and field tripod valued at more than $1,000. She also won a League plaque.

She is a member of the National Capital Astronomers Astronomy club where she won Astroscience Talent Awards for three years, 1999-2001. She was a finalist for the 2003 Intel Science Talent Search. She has done independent study in physics at American University and in biological anthropology at George Washington University. Her research project An Assessment of Linear and Accelerated Motion in Double Stars produced a technique new to the astronomical community: the use of double stars as calibration objects for star catalogs.

Among her many other accomplishments, Sabrina has participated in the U.S. Department of Defense Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program as an employee at the U.S. Naval Observatory for the past four summers, with Dr. George Kaplan serving as one of her mentors in the science of astronomy.

She and Dr. Kaplan published an abstract entitled "An Independent Assessment of a Subset of Hipparcos and Tycho-2 Proper Motions" in The Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society in 2001, which was presented at the 2002 international meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

A few months ago Sabrina tutored a dyslexic student in astronomy, which resulted in his learning a number of concepts such as parallax and Kepler's laws. She authored a paper for American University explaining the instructional method that she had employed with the suggestion that it might be incorporated into curriculums to help gifted students affected by dyslexia.

Sabrina plans to earn a doctorate in either astronomy or anthropology.

Molly Mae Potter -3rd place

Our third-place winner is Molly M. Potter, a senior at Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She founded the Salem Academy Astronomy Club, which has sponsored local observing sessions with the Winston-Salem/Forsyth Astronomical Society. She is actively involved in helping the astronomy club with its observing sessions and sky tours for the general public.

Molly completed a research project entitled Comparison of Star Forming Regions in the Milky Way and Colliding Galaxies while having access to the 61" telescope on Mount Bigelow, AZ and the 60" telescope on Mount Lemmon, AZ while she attended the University of Arizona Advanced Astronomy Camp during the summers of 2001 and 2002.

Molly also participated in a three-week internship at NASA's Johnson Space Center, volunteered at the Sciworks planetarium and was a featured speaker at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. regarding her advocacy for young people in substance abuse recovery.

Molly will be sent a League plaque in recognition of her achievement.

Other top ten finalists are:

· John Roma Skok, Apalachin, NY, "The Correlation of Martian Erosion Rates and the Locations Elevation based on the Analysis of Crater-Size Densities"
· Alan Aversa, Tualatin, OR, "Stellar Evolution: The Life and Death of Stars"
· Anna Czoski, Spokane, WA, work dealing with the concept of red and blue shift
· Susana Hancock, Freeport, ME, "Using the theories revolving around MACHOS and WIMPS to prove the existence of Dark Matter"
· Rebecca Alestick, Guthrie, OK, "Bose-Einstein Condensates in Relation to Stellar Degeneration and Black Hole Physical Dynamics"
· Lev (Jacob) R. Akopyan, Olathe, KS Drawings for a camera spectograph
· Daniel Gifford, Puyallup, WA, Astronomical studies.

Congratulations to all who submitted an application for the NYAA award this year. The quality of the referenced work was outstanding.