Astronomer at WSU is starry-eyed

Palen: "I have at times. Some people are still very old-school, and I had some very elderly professors ... who definitely thought I shouldn't be there. But I'm the sort of person where, when you tell me I can't do something, then I decide that that's exactly the thing I will do. So they didn't discourage me too much."

News: "Do you think you'll stay in the field of planetaries or will you look into other parts of astronomy?"

Palen: "Well, I've already started looking into other parts. We have an undergraduate project here where we're looking for planets around eclipsing binary stars, which is just fun. It's a great project for undergraduates to work on."

News: "Do you have any hobbies other than astronomy?"

Palen: "I do. I ride horses, and in the past I've ridden event horses. It's like the triathlon of horse sports. Right now I'm getting really interested in dressage at the moment. ... "

News: "I don't even know what it is."

Palen: " ... which is horse ballet. And so I'm learning to do that. ... That's a whole other thing, it's like learning to ride again from the very beginning, and so I'm really enjoying that."

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com