Agenda:
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Members Corner:
7:30 - 7:45 Refreshment break
7:45 - Public Presentation
Speaker: James Albury, Planetarium Director and host of the YouTube Series "The Sky Above Us"
Topic: Jack Horkheimer's "Child of the Universe"
Join us to watch one of the most widely acclaimed planetarium productions in the world! 'Jack Horkheimer's Child of the Universe' - (an original production of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium in 1972, digitally converted to be performed on the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium dome).
Mankind's search for a cosmic identity has brought him from the flattering and secure notion that the Earth was the center of the whole of creation to a cosmology so awesome that entire galaxies seem lost and insignificant. 'Child of the Universe' deals with the fundamental questions raised whenever humans contemplate their place in the scheme of all that exists. Cutting through theoretical arguments and technical jargon, it seeks answers not expressed in the limited vocabulary of science but in the unlimited and universal language of the heart.
Winner of the International Award for Multi-Media, "Child of the Universe" has been hailed by critics as "The art form at its imaginative best," and "A work of art that stands in a class by itself." It seems destined to become the first planetarium production meriting the adjective "classic".
(A collaboration between Kika Silva Pla Planetarium and Frost Planetarium (formerly the 'Miami Space Transit Planetarium')
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Short topic presentation by a club member
Speaker: Dr. Jamie Tayar
Title: Landolt Artificial Star
Abstract:
The recently approved Landolt NASA Space Mission will place an artificial “star” in orbit to allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will begin to address several open challenges in astrophysics including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion. The artificial star will have eight lasers shining at ground optical telescopes in order to calibrate them for observations, and although not bright enough to see with the naked eye, it will be observable with amateur telescopes. At an altitude of 22,236-miles, this geosynchronous orbit will ensure the satellite will be constantly over the United States.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Tayar graduated from Caltech in 2012 with a B.Sc in astronomy, then earned her astronomy M.SC in 2014 and Ph.D in 2018 both at The Ohio State University. She was then a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa before becoming an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida in 2022. She is interested in stars, how they grow, how they change, and what that tells us about the physics going on inside them. She works both on the theory of stars, thinking about how to make better models of their structure and evolution, as well as on observations, using large datasets of photometry from the ground and space as well as high-resolution spectroscopy to precisely and accurately characterize these stars. She also uses asteroseismology, the study of stellar oscillations, to tell us about the internal structure of stars.
Research Interests:
Stellar Physics and Evolution
Speaker: Dr. Jessica li
Title: UV Emissions Surrounding Galaxies
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) and intergalactic medium (IGM), the tenuous gas surrounding galaxies represent a significant portion of matter in the universe as indicated by both theoretical and observational studies. This faint and diffuse gas is not well studied since it is very challenging to observe. Studying the CGM is essential for understanding astrophysical principles that govern the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the universe. It is believed to be the reservoir of gas and material that is both the source and regulator of star-forming fuel, controlling the exchange between the intergalactic medium (IGM) between galaxies and interstellar medium (ISM) within galaxies. We advance our understanding of these processes through ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopic CGM emission line observations in high redshift galaxies in addition to instrumentation work for balloon-borne and space telescopes that target low redshift galaxies. I present four distinct but interrelated projects that combine observational astronomy, instrument building, and technology development. This includes quasar observations from the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager (PCWI), instrument work on FIREBall-2 (Faint Intergalactic-medium Redshifted Balloon) telescope and Aspera SmallSat mission, and technology development of UV reflective gratings.
UV astrophysics and UV instrumentation.
The Far Out Journal Club invites you to join us for an online conversation with esteemed author Dava Sobel
From the outer limits of the Milky Way, the Alachua Astronomy Club has started the Far Out Journal Club. Produced by Rich Russin and hosted by past president Terry Smiljanich, the goal is to have a personal, in-depth visit with the authors, artists, musicians, curators, and other cultural icons who bring us the vast world of cultural science and science fiction.
Get ready for a special evening as we host Dava Sobel for an online conversation about her career and the critically acclaimed books she has written. Her stories take readers on a trip back in time, placing you squarely in the center of major discoveries as they unfold. Backed by masterful research, she brings you the story behind the story.
Dava Sobel
Author | Historian | Biographer
Self Portrait:
"I have spent my entire professional life writing, including two years as a staff reporter in the Science News department of The New York Times.
New York City born and raised, I grew up within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens, and attended the Bronx High School of Science (class of 1964). I was a lost soul in college (several changes of majors at three different schools). Fortunately for me, no one around me thought it odd or ill-fated for a girl to be interested in science.
Working freelance for a variety of magazines kept me busily employed until the publication of Longitude in 1995—and its unexpected success—allowed me to write books that require years of research. (I should add that I enjoy that part.)"
Biography:
Dava Sobel is the author of Longitude (Walker 1995, Bloomsbury 2005), Galileo's Daughter (Walker 1999 and 2011), The Planets (Viking 2005, Penguin 2006), A More Perfect Heaven (Walker/Bloomsbury 2011 and 2012), And the Sun Stood Still (Bloomsbury 2016), The Glass Universe (Viking 2016, Penguin 2017) and The elements of Marie Curie (Grove/Atlantic 2024). She has also co-authored six books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank Drake, and currently edits the “Meter” poetry column in Scientific American.
Awards:
2001 Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board “for fostering awareness of science and technology among broad segments of the general public.”
2001 Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science for her “outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vital roles it plays in all our lives.”
2004 Harrison Medal from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, London, in recognition of her contribution to increasing awareness of the science of horology by the general public.
2008 Klumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for “increasing the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.”
2014 Cultural Award from the Eduard Rhein Foundation of Germany “for using her profound scientific knowledge and literary talent to combine facts with fiction by merging scientific adventures and human stories in order to give the history of science a human face.”
Books:
The Far Out Journal Club highly recommends you check out one of her excellent books to further enhance your enjoyment of the episode.
https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-elements-of-marie-curie/
“There is a very short list of biographers whose books you’ll read regardless of who the subject happens to be. And there is, perhaps, an even shorter list of brilliant science communicators who can make complex subjects both accessible and fascinating. At the center of that Venn diagram is Dava Sobel. The Elements of Marie Curie may be her best book yet. I am absolutely scandalized by how little I actually knew about this extraordinary, accomplished, and inspiring woman. What a deeply satisfying read!”
— Susan Tunis, bookseller at Bookshop West Portal, San Francisco
Join Zoom Meeting:
Http://bit.ly/FarOutJournalClub
https://sfcollege.zoom.us/j/91733146162?pwd=Ib7KD0Sd1UKU8cbeUR0u7bxbOzmSOj.1
Topic: TBD
Join James Albury, host of the YouTube astronomy program "The Sky Above Us" (TheSkyAboveUs.org), and 2011-2019 co-host of the PBS TV Show "Star Gazers", as he takes you on a personally guided tour of our night sky, using our GOTO Chronos Space Simulator. Florida Skies is our weekly star show that familiarizes you with some of the popular constellations visible from sunset to sunrise, as well as the stories behind them. We'll also show you how and where in the sky you can find the brightest planets.
Speaker: Dr. Zachary Slepian - UF
Title: Dark Energy
Originally from Fairfield, Connecticut, an early interest in philosophy led to his current interest in cosmology. He attended public high school, received a BA summa cum laude from Princeton (2011), working with J. Richard Gott, III on his senior thesis, an MSt in philosophy of physics at Oxford (2012), and a PhD in Astrophysics (2016) from Harvard, advised by Daniel J. Eisenstein. During his PhD, he focused on Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the 2-point and 3-point correlation function (3PCF) of galaxies, constraining a possible systematic sourced by high-redshift baryon-dark matter relative velocities using the 3PCF. This entailed developing a transformatively fast 3PCF algorithm, enabling the first high-significance detection of BAO in the 3PCF and a measurement of the cosmic distance scale six billion years ago to percent precision. Post-PhD, he spent one year as a Chamberlain Fellow and one year as an Einstein Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where highlights included an implementation of the 3PCF algorithm capable of computing the 3PCF for the entire observable Universe in 20-hours on NERSC’s Cori supercomputer, application of the 3PCF to MHD turbulence, and novel analytic solutions for the Friedmann equation in the presence of neutrinos or warm dark matter.
Dark energy, dark matter, structure formation, large surveys, analytic methods, star formation. His current research follows three broad paths: creating theoretical models for large-scale structure, designing fast algorithms to measure it, and applying them to datasets such as BOSS, eBOSS, and DESI. Cutting across these areas are a strong attraction to analytic methods and excitement about effective use of high-performance computing.
Speaker: Anna Metke - Space Resource Technologies
Title: Regolith Production
TBD
