Location to be determined - may be online via Zoom - check back for update
Join us for an exciting and interesting evening at the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium (Santa Fe College)!
Meeting by Zoom
Agenda:
7:00 - 7:30 General Meeting & Announcements 7:30 - 7:45 Refreshments 7:45 - Public Presentation
Speaker: Deena Mickelson
NRAO VLA Operator
Topic: NRAO Tour and a Day in the Life of a VLA Operator
About the Speaker
I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer and Aircrewman who used her GI Bill to study astronomy at the University of Florida. After graduating I landed a job at the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico where I have the fortune of being one of only seven “VLA Operations Specialists” – more commonly known as VLA Operators.
Abstract:
The Very Large Array is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). It was built in the 1970s and went operational in 1980. Between 2001 - 2012 it underwent a major upgrade into what is referred to as the Extended VLA (EVLA), and now there are plans for yet another upgrade to the Next Generation VLA (ngVLA).
The NRAO is run by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) - a non-profit corporation, headquartered in Washington, DC. There are two other telescopes that fall under NRAO; ALMA and the VLBA. The Green Bank Telescope was designed and built by NRAO but is now operated by the independent Green Bank Observatory.
The VLA itself has 27 antennas in an array consisting of railroad tracks along three arms, each about 13 miles long. While one antenna weighs about 230 tons, we have two specially built vehicles called “Transporters” that can move the antennas along those railroad tracks. Usually we change antenna configurations every 4 months to optimize observing needs, but since 2017 one of those configurations is extended a while and the other three shortened to allow for a hybrid configuration used for VLASS (The Very Large Array Sky Survey) observations. There are actually 28 antennas on site, but one is kept in rotation so we can perform routine maintenance and/or upgrades while simultaneously observing. That said, we can have up to 3 additional antennas offline and still collect good data. This means we can even observe while moving antennas into new configurations.
The brain behind all those telescopes is called the Correlator, which is located in a chamber right next to the Control Room where I work. This supercomputer crunches all the numbers; the signals received by the antennas, the exact locations of those antennas, the distances and directions between them, and a multitude of other information. Without the Correlator, we would be dead in the water. Researchers from around the world use the VLA.
To apply for telescope time, all they do is submit a proposal - it does not cost them any money. Based on the scientific merit of the proposals, they are either granted time or not. Once a proposal is accepted, they write their script – a computer program that tells the antennas what to observe. They use NRAO software and we have Astronomers on hand to help. These scripts are reviewed and once they are deemed good, loaded into a queue, waiting for the time they will be run. The VLA Operator pulls a schedule from a database called the Operations Scheduling Tool (OST) which sorts these scripts by their priorities, telescope configuration and weather requirements, and – of course – by what time the targets they want to look at are in the sky.
If there is no reason to reject it, the Operator accepts and runs the script. Once the observation has been completed, we email the researchers our log for their observation along with where they can access their data. For one year it is theirs to do what they want with, but after that, the data is released into a public database.
Special Note: Depending on the COVID-19 situation, this meeting may or may not be held at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Circumstances may force the club to change the meeting to an online Zoom format. Check back for updates.
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Short topic presentation by a club member 7:30 - Public Presentation
Speaker: Dr. Howard L. Cohen
Emeritus Assoc. Professor of Astronomy, University of Florida
Topic: Celestial Perversions: Distorted Visions of Our Heavens*
Ever since our ancestors first gazed upwards, people have used the sky to express emotions in words and images. Today we continue to exalt the heavens. Sometimes we get it right; often we get it wrong! This unusual, entertaining, informative and sometimes humorous presentation illustrates how we have often mangled stars, planets and moons in an attempt to capture the heavens in our literary and artistic works.
Don't miss this fun-filled multimedia program filled with many examples of celestial perversions! This program is suitable for both beginning and advanced star gazers. You may even learn some astronomy along the way.
*An adaptation of a presentation given 2002 August at the Nebraska Star Party. Later further adapted for an AAC talk, 2007 October. Most current AAC members have probably not seen or remember this presentation. It remains among my wife's favorites, which prompts me to do it again.
About the Speaker:
Professor Howard L. Cohen is a retired faculty member in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he taught physical sciences and astronomy for more than thirty-five years (1968-2003). During this time he taught graduate courses and basic astronomy and science classes to more than 15,000 students. In addition, he also helped pioneer the use of multimedia for teaching astronomy. During the 1980s, while directing the undergraduate laboratory courses, he completed a major renovation of the Teaching Observatory and initiated its Friday night public programs. Later he served as the department's graduate coordinator. For many years he tried interesting the University of Florida in building a planetarium. Although unsuccessful, his efforts finally helped Santa Fe College build its own planetarium. Professor Cohen is also a founding member of the old Florida (Amateur) Astronomical Society (1971) and the Alachua Astronomy Club (1987) where he has been a frequent presenter. Dr. Cohen was instrumental helping the Alachua Astronomy Club and artist Elizabeth Indianos design both the Gainesville (now Regal) Royal Park Stadium 16 astronomical murals (1999) and the Gainesville Solar Walk Planetary Monuments (installed 2002). He has been interested in astronomy since the seventh grade and attended the University of Michigan where he received a B.S. in astronomy (1962). His graduate work was done at Indiana University. Here he was among the first astronomy graduates students in the USA to earn his A.M. degree (1964) and Ph.D. degree (1968) under the guidance of an African American astronomer, Dr. Benjamin F. Perry. For a time in 1964 and 1966 Dr. Cohen was a staff astronomer at Lowell Observatory where he worked both on research projects and acted as tour guide. Later he served as a consultant and Southeast Regional Sales Manager for Meade Telescopes in the 1980s. Research interests have spanned a variety of projects including lunar and asteroid occultations, eclipses, calendars, eclipsing binaries and star clusters. At Indiana University he helped pioneer the use of high-speed mainframe computers in photoelectric, spectroscopic and binary star data reduction and analyses. His work helped determine reliable temperatures for very hot stars. During the 1980s he was also the first to test a prototype of a new Air Force ground-based electro-optical deep-space surveillance system (GEODSS) for the detection of asteroids and comets. Since 1968 he has worked with his wife, Marian, an independent travel consultant with Continental Capers Travel in Gainesville, to plan, organize and escort worldwide eclipse and other astronomical tours for small groups. He has traveled globally to more than a dozen total or annular solar eclipses and successfully observed both the 2004 and 2012 transits of Venus. He continues to be an active member of the Alachua Astronomy Club.
Speaker: Geoffrey Landis
Researcher- John Glenn Research Center
Topic: Triton's Mysteries
Description of Talk:
Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, is Pluto’s big brother: mysterious, icy, backwards, and pink. Icy? The mountains of Triton are made of water ice, and the geysers are liquid nitrogen. Backwards? It’s the only large moon in the solar system that orbits retrograde, in the opposite direction from the planet’s spin. Pink? Yes, it has a surface partially covered with tholins, complex organic molecules with a peculiar reddish-pink tint. Icy on the outside, liquid on the inside, it has only been visited once, by the Voyager-2 probe, which flew past it on the way out of the solar system.
Dr. Landis will talk about a concept for a future mission to try to learn more about Triton’s mysteries, a mission to send a vehicle to land on Triton and then hop from site to site using a radioisotope-powered rocket engine.
.About the Speaker:
Dr. Geoffrey Landis is a researcher at the NASA John Glenn Research Center, where he works on developing advanced technologies for space. He also contributes expertise on the physics of the space environment to the NASA Glenn COMPASS spacecraft design team, where he has worked on planetary missions to destinations ranging from Mercury to Europa to beyond Pluto. He was the Ronald McNair-NASA Professor of Astronautics at MIT, where he taught a graduate course on spacecraft design. He holds ten patents and has been involved in a number of space missions, including the Mars Pathfinder mission, the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Parker Solar Probe.
He is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts fellow and a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2013, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics awarded him the AIAA Aerospace Power Award for contributions to power systems for planetary and space missions.
In his spare time, he is an award-winning science fiction writer. He is the author of the novel Mars Crossing and the story collection Impact Parameter (and Other Quantum Realities), and has written over eighty published science fiction stories.
The meeting will be online via Zoom only due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Speaker: James Albury, Planetarium director and co-host of the weekly TV show "Stargazers."
