Exclusively for AAC members!
AAC has organized a dark sky star party at one of the darkest skies on the east coast!
Sunset is 7:43 pm. Arrive at least one hour before sunset for setup and to get familiar with the observing field before dark.
Please review the Star Party etiquette for Chiefland. http://shorturl.at/cgkMO
You need to register to attend and receive directions to observing field.
Event Alerts - Members please register to attend. A "GO" or "NO GO" will be emailed to registrants by noon the day of the event. Your need to be registered for me to send you updates
Our speaker will be attending in person, please try to attend in person too!
Agenda:
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Short topic presentation by a club member
7:30 - 7:45 Refreshment break
7:45 - Public Presentation
Speaker: Christopher Layser
Independent Researcher/Lecturer
Society for Cultural Astronomy of the American Southwest
International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture
Pre-Columbian Society of the Penn Museum
Title:
Archaeoastronomy: A brief history of the discipline and four cultural examples of “Architectural Orientation Families”
Abstract:
Archaeoastronomy is the multi-disciplinary study of the beliefs and practices concerning the sky held by people of pre-historic cultures. It focuses on how people of the past put their astronomical knowledge to practical and ritual use. Its aim then, is to ask pertinent social questions about the human past. This lecture will briefly explore the history of the field, including its early missteps at Stonehenge, and the intervening years in search of a rigorous methodology. The second half of this discussion will focus on the concept of “orientation families”, groups of ceremonial architecture for a given culture which share a common orientation to a horizon declination marking a specific solar event. Examples presented will include ancient Egyptian and Hawaiian temples, Maya E-Group complexes, and the Great Houses of Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest. How and why these particular orientations to astronomical events were important to the people of each culture will be stressed.
About the Speaker:
Christopher Layser earned his MA in Cultural Astronomy from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David where he was awarded the “Dyfernir Gwobr MA Seryddiaeth ac Astroleg Ddiwylliannol” (Alumni Association Dissertation Award) for outstanding dissertation of 2019 which was titled “Maya Skyscape Iconology: Can an Iconological Analysis of a Classic Period Vase (K1485) Further our Understanding of Ancient Maya Skyscapes?”. He was also one of the few to obtain the Post-Graduate Certificate in Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture from the short-lived program at the University of Oklahoma. Christopher is an assistant editor for the newly revived Journal of Astronomy in Culture, the official journal for the International Society of Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC) and organizes a monthly journal club for the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest (SCAAS).
Research Interests
Christopher’s primary research interest and academic focus is the skyscape archaeology of the ancient Maya. He regularly participates in the excavation, digital mapping, and 3D imaging of ancient Maya ruins in northwestern Belize with the Maya Research Program (MRP) at such archaeological sites as Tz’unun, Xnoha, Tulix Mul, and Blue Creek. He will be returning to the field in 2023 to complete the mapping and archaeoastronomical analysis of the E-Group complex at Tz’unun. As a board member of the Penn Museum Pre-Columbian Society he books speakers, organizes workshops, and co-runs a monthly Maya Glyph Group. A secondary focus in the archaeoastronomy in the American Southwest will take him to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in summer of 2023 as part of a small research team sanctioned by the National Parks Services to continue the orientation studies of the Chacoan Great Houses.
Speaker: James Albury
Planetarium Director and host of the YouTube Series "The Sky Above Us"
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: Jared Cathey
JWST and Gravitationally Lensed Systems
Speaker: Dr. Amy Williams
Assistant Professor of Geology
University of Florida
NASA Rovers Curiosity and Perseverance Exploration of Mars
The Mars rover Curiosity explored a valley called Glen Torridon on the lower slopes of a sedimentary mountain within Gale crater between January 2019 and January 2021. The rocks within this shallow valley are part of a sequence of rock layers whose mineral composition could imply a transition from a wetter to drier environment more than 3-billion years ago. This presentation describes this exploration campaign designed to understand the local geology, document evidence of past climate change, and investigate if the ancient environments may have been amenable to biological activity. Curiosity found that many rocks were deposited in the bottom of a lake, but also that river deposits occur frequently in this area, suggesting that the environmental conditions changed through time. Curiosity observed evidence for multiple cycles of water interacting with the sediments that chemically changed the elemental and mineralogical compositions of the rock layers. Curiosity collected 11 drill holes over the course of the campaign and found abundant clay minerals, as predicted, as well as a wide variety of organic molecules, suggesting that the ancient environment contained many of the necessary conditions to support life.
Amy earned her bachelor of science degree in Environmental Science from Furman University in 2007 before completing her master of science degree in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of New Mexico in 2009. She then attended the University of California, Davis, for her PhD, where she first began working with NASA's Curiosity rover. After earning her PhD in 2014, Amy accepted a postdoctoral research position at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland where she continued working with the Curiosity rover as a member of the SAM instrument team to explore the distribution of organic molecules on Mars’ surface. In 2015 Amy joined the geoscience faculty at Towson University in Towson, Maryland as an assistant professor. In 2018 she joined the geoscience faculty at the University of Florida, and in 2020 she began working with the NASA Perseverance rover science team as a Participating Scientist. She has received several NASA group achievement awards for her work with the Curiosity rover team, received a nomination for the 2017 Maryland Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award, and was a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow.
Dr. Williams’ research focuses on the interaction between microbial life, the geochemical environment, and the rock record on Earth, and how to recognize habitable environments and potentially preserved microbial life on Mars and the outer world moons.
Speaker:
Dr. Rana Ezzeddine
Galactic Archaeology with the Oldest Stars
