Pomona’s Astrophysics Students Keep Watch for Near Earth Asteroids

The Table Mountain Observatory, or TMO, is the College’s one-meter telescope built on a Jet Propulsion Laboratory facility near Wrightwood, California. 

Designed and constructed in the 1980s, the observatory’s research capabilities were limited during its first few decades. But in the past five years, TMO has exploded onto the astronomy scene as a productive science machine. 

“We’re active every clear night,” Choi says, “so we’re involved in a very serious way in two or three big collaborations where we’re churning out data on a night-to-night basis.”

TMO provides an advanced learning opportunity that many young astrophysicists don’t receive until grad school. It’s also been a boon for recruiting high-caliber students to the College.

“I did not think coming in that I would have the level of hands-on experience, the level of interaction with senior researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory [and] the level of interaction with collaborators around the world,” Sage Santomenna ’26 says.

Santomenna turned down multiple R1 university offers in favor of attending Pomona College for its astrophysics program. Their work at TMO was the foundation of a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship awarded for the 2025-26 academic year.

Santomenna exemplifies the important roles students have played in bolstering the telescope through its history, Choi says.

“I’d say there’s been a factor of ten increase in the efficiency of our telescope based on a lot of the software tools that Sage has been able to build for us,” Choi says.

On more than one occasion, Choi has been asked why he doesn’t roboticize and automate the observatory to pump out nonstop research for collaborators.

His answer is always the same: TMO needs to remain accessible to Pomona students.

Since taking over as the facility’s point-person 18 years ago, Choi has worked with students to secure multiple National Science Foundation and NASA grants to build up the million-dollar instrumentation and high-tech software that are the bedrock of the now modernized telescope.

He’s also expanded research possibilities for students with the refinement of TMO’s companion, the Remote Observatory, which is based in Estella Laboratory on campus. From the comfort of a classroom in Claremont, students can operate the mountaintop telescope late at night.

“It’s such a powerful thing to have a facility like this,” says Tala Istanbouli ’28, a physics and astronomy major. “Something I really appreciate about being here is that you’re never babied, and your abilities are never underestimated. You are always perceived to have the capabilities to do things hands-on.”

As TMO continues to evolve in leaps and bounds, the astrophysics world has taken notice.

The combination of advanced instrumentation and year-round, immediate access enables TMO to occupy a unique niche in high-spatial and temporal-resolution imaging of fast-moving objects. For the Near Earth Asteroid study, the TMO facility achieves astrometric performance better than all but a handful of competing systems in the world.

“It’s a humble one-meter telescope,” Choi says, “so compared to a lot of other instruments doing this research, it’s small. But the thing that makes it special is the hardware on the backend is doing something that very few facilities do.”

“People are sometimes skeptical of our technique, but our results speak for themselves.”