WAA Meeting and Lecture Friday, January 10th at 7:30 p.m.

David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY or on-line (link on WAA home page)

The James Webb Space Telescope:
Humankind’s greatest space science facility

James Beletic, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer, Teledyne Imaging Systems

This talk presents the scientific motivation behind the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the technical challenges and solutions, its orbit in space, its observing cadence, and details about the infrared focal plane arrays that are the unique “eyes” of the observatory. JWST’s technical performance will be discussed and of course many scientific images will be shown.

Dr. Beletic will speak to us remotely, but live attendance at Pace is encouraged. Come at 7:00 p.m. to meet fellow WAAers. There will be door prizes.

If the main entrance to Pace is closed, used Entrance 3 further down Bedford Road towards Pleasantville. Follow the route on THIS MAP

Dr. Beletic is the Chief Scientific Officer of Teledyne Digital Imaging, Space. In this role, he is responsible for engaging current and prospective space customers to grow Teledyne’s space business across the full suite of Teledyne’s imaging technologies. He coordinates Teledyne’s space imaging strategy and technology roadmaps. The Teledyne imaging business units involved in space missions are Teledyne Imaging Sensors, e2v Space Imaging, DALSA, and Judson Technologies.

During 2013-2023, Jim was the President of Teledyne Imaging Sensors (TIS), which is a world leader in the development and production of high performance infrared focal plane arrays. TIS sensors are operating in instrumentation at every major ground-based telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Pluto New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, the Euclid dark universe mission, and weather satellites such as the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). The next generation of infrared space astronomy missions (SPHEREx, Roman Space Telescope, NEO Surveyor, ARIEL) are made possible by Teledyne’s imaging sensors. TIS plays a vital role in National Defense and supplies infrared arrays, cameras, and electronics to the commercial laboratory instrumentation market.

Dr. Beletic has over 40 years of experience in instrumentation, with specialization in visible and infrared image sensor technologies. His career is a unique combination of international work experience that includes scientific positions at major research centers (Harvard University, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research Institute), leadership positions at the world’s foremost astronomical observatories (European Southern Observatory, Keck Observatory), and senior level management of an industry leader in infrared sensors (Teledyne).

Dr. Beletic is an active leader in the international astronomical community, chairing review panels for scientific projects, teaching seminars, giving invited talks, and hosting international conferences. Asteroid 14669 is named after him in recognition of his contributions to astronomy.

Friday, December 13, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

Live at the David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY and on Zoom (link on the WAA home page)

Seeing the Invisible: What does a Black Hole look like?

Eliot Quataert, PhD
Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy
Princeton University

Prof. Quataert is an astrophysics theorist who works on a wide range of problems, including stars and black holes, accretion theory, plasma astrophysics, and how galaxies form, using both analytic calculations and numerical simulations. He received his undergraduate degree at MIT and PhD from Harvard and was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study. After being on the faculty at UC Berkeley, he moved to Princeton in 2020.

Free & open to the public. In-person attendance is always more fun!

WAA November Meeting

Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm
David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY

LIVE and via Zoom (link on WAA home page)

Evaporating Exoplanet Atmospheres

W. Garrett Levine
Department of Astronomy, Yale University

Among the most surprising discoveries in the exoplanet era is the number of short-period planets with orbits smaller than that of Mercury. Because these planets are so close to their host stars, theoretical models hypothesize that their atmospheres are at-risk of evaporating due to intense stellar ultraviolet and X-Ray irradiation. Some of those predictions have recently been confirmed with data from telescopes including Hubble and JWST. This talk will describe how this new branch of research places longstanding results from solar system geoscience in an exoplanet context and will conclude with a discussion of how amateur astronomers are supporting these ongoing observational campaigns.

The speaker will be with us at Pace, so WAA members and guests are encouraged to come to the meeting.!

Free & open to the public.

Friday, October 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Live at David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville NY or via Zoom

Monster Black Holes at the Edge of the Universe

Zoltan Haiman, PhD
Department of Astronomy, Columbia University

Black holes as massive as several billion solar masses appeared within a billion years after the Big Bang. The origin of these objects remains a mystery. Prof. Haiman will present state-of-the art speculations on how such massive black holes may have formed in the early universe from black hole remnants of the first stars, via rapid gas accretion, or via successive mergers. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and with the space-based gravitational-wave detector called Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will help us understand the origin of massive black holes, as well as their subsequent growth through gas accretion and mergers.

Free & open to the public. In-person attendance encouraged. Meet & greet WAA members.

If you wish to attend via Zoom, the link is on the WAA home page.

Please note: this is the 3rd Friday of the month. The second Friday is Yom Kippur. The remaining talks in 2024 will be on the second Friday of the month.

Friday, September 13, 2024 7:30 p.m.
Via Zoom Only

Members’ Night

One of the most popular meetings of the year is our annual “Member’s Night.” Club members present talks on a vast range of subjects of astronomical interest, including their astronomy trips, observations, new equipment, imaging techniques, and other topics.

Members interested in presenting should email WAA’s Vice President for Programs, Pat Mahon, at waa-programs@westchesterastronomers.org.

This meeting will be held online via Zoom only.

Roman Tytla at WAA Members’ Night

Friday, June 14 at 7:30 p.m.

David Pecker Conference Room, WIllcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY or via ZOOM (link on home page.

Solving the Missing Baryon Problem with Fast Radio Bursts

Isabel Medlock
Department of Astronomy, Yale University

Recently discovered fast radio bursts, milliseconds long, extremely energetic radio pulses of mysterious origins, are not only fascinating phenomena in themselves but also exciting as a tool to answer astrophysical and cosmological questions about the nature of our universe. In this talk, I will review the discovery and history of fast radio bursts and their potential as cosmological probes. In particular, fast radio bursts are a potential path to resolving the missing baryon problem, the discrepancy between the baryons we observe in the universe and the amount predicted by Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background. I will highlight the discoveries already made and the promising future possibilities with the advent of facilities like CHIME and DSA-2000 which will discover and localize tens of thousands of FRBs per year.

I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate at the Astronomy Department at Yale University working with Prof. Daisuke Nagai. I was born and raised in Philadelphia, where I attended a Spanish Immersion elementary and middle school and a project-based high school. In May of 2021, I graduated with honors from Princeton University with a B.A. in Astrophysics and minors in Computer Science and Russian Language and Culture. I matriculated to the Yale University Astronomy Department in the Fall of 2021 to pursue my PhD in Astrophysics. My research interests broadly lay in computational cosmology. Specifically, I am interested in a wide range of topics including fast radio bursts, the circumgalactic medium, feedback in hydrodynamical simulations, and cold streams that feed star-forming high-z galaxies. Outside of research, I am passionate about increasing the accessibility of astronomy in the Latinx community.

Free & open to the public.

Friday, May 10 at 7:30 pm

Live at David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY or via Zoom

Funding the Final Frontier

Emma Loudon

Department of Astronomy, Yale University

This interactive, in-person talk will explore the intricate dynamics of funding for space exploration, with a particular focus on NASA’s profound impact on society. We’ll discover how strategic investments in space missions have advanced our scientific understanding and spurred innovations that permeate everyday life. From technological advancements to fostering international cooperation, we will learn how NASA’s budgeting decisions shape economic growth, technological innovation, and even the geopolitical landscape. The vast societal returns generated by funding space exploration argue for continued investment in reaching beyond our earthly confines for what some would call less practical reasons. Join astrophysicist Emma Louden (@exoplanet_emma) as she charts the course from fiscal inputs to astronomical impacts, highlighting why pursuing the unknown yields dividends far beyond the stars.

Free and open to the public.

Friday, March 8 at 7:30 pm

Galactic Archeology

Allyson Sheffield, Ph.D.

Professor of Physics,
LaGuardia Community College & American Museum of Natural History

How did the Milky Way get to look the way it looks today? Are there “cosmic fossils” that can be collected and studied, in the same way that the Earth’s history is probed with terrestrial fossils? The answer is yes, and one manifestation of these cosmic fossils are groups of stars called stellar streams. The identification of stellar streams associated with the Milky Way provide a way of looking at events that occurred billions of years ago, in some cases right after our galaxy formed. In this talk, Dr. Sheffield will discuss what stellar streams are, how they form, and how they can be found using large data sets..

The meeting is free and open to the public. We encourage live attendance so you can meet and greet fellow WAA members. If you can’t make it to Pace University, you can watch it on line. The Zoom link is on the Home page.

LIVE at Pace University or via Zoom (see Home page for link)

Friday, February 9 at 7:30 pm

The Vera Rubin Observatory and LuSEE Night

Steve Bellavia

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Two of the most recent projects at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are the camera for the Vera Rubin Telescope (formerly called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) and the LuSEE at Night lunar radio telescope. Steve will discuss how these two instruments are designed and built and describe their scientific goals.

Steve is an amateur astronomer, astrophotographer and telescope maker. He’s been at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1992 and is the principal mechanical engineer for the Vera Rubin camera, the largest and most sophisticated astronomy camera ever built. He is an assistant adjunct professor of astronomy and physics at Suffolk County Community College and the Astronomy Education and Outreach Coordinator at the Custer Institute and Observatory in Southold, New York.

Free and open to the public!