Astronomy & Physics major Mary Anne Peters has been awarded the College of Science excellence in Undergraduate Research Award for 2008. She won this award for her work with Astronomy Professor Laird Close on BESSEL, which is an instrument for the Steward Observatory telescope. This instrument tested new technology (in collaboration with OSC Professor Grover Swartzlander and OSC graduate student Erin Ford) on-sky for the first time. This technology may, in the future, be utilized to image planets in other star systems. This is exciting because imaging extrasolar planets enables one to determine whether there is life beyond the Earth.