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.
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.
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.
Live at David Pecker Conference Room, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY or via ZOOM (Zoom link on WAA homepage)
The History of the Universe, from 1919 to Today
Jeremy Tinker, PhD Associate Professor at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and the Department of Physics at NYU
Dr. Tinker will review the discoveries that led to our current understand of the state of the universe, starting with the confirmation of Einstein’s relativity, through the discovery of the expansion of the universe, and the pursuit of the nature of the universe that led to the discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.
Dr. Tinker at the Jantar Mantar Observatory, Jaipur, India.
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.
WAA Meeting & Lecture Friday, January 12 at 7:30 pm
Live at David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University or via Zoom
(link on WAA home page)
Astronomy Education’s Changing Perspective
Marc Taylor
Senior Manager, Planetarium and Science Programs. Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY,
In the past, astronomy education was largely about mathematics, observing techniques, and perhaps theological interpretations of those observations. Over the past 75 years, astronomy education has democratized and become more widely available to all ages, backgrounds, and interests, and can now take us to other worlds and other times. But there has been another change, very recent, permeating the sciences and science education as well — and this newest turn is not really about astronomy at all…
A native of Upstate New York, Marc grew up exploring the woods and streams of the Hudson Valley, and investigating the wider world through popular accounts of science, his father’s math textbooks, and whatever science television programs could reach the family rooftop antenna through the hills of the Hudson Highlands. He attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, graduating in 1993 with a degree in art and a focus on geology, having also studied art history, biology, physics, and chemistry. A summer job at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led to the field of science education. Over the past ten years, as awareness and alarm about ecological issues has grown, Marc has been bringing in more elements of local ecology into programs at the Hudson River Museum; leading nature walks and creating ecology-focused activities and workshops for the public. He is currently pursuing an Urban Naturalist certificate from the New York Botanical Garden and planning for the 2024 Solar Eclipse.
Friday, September 10th Live at David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University and via Zoom
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.
In-person attendance is always encouraged. Meet and greet fellow amateur astronomers.
Live at Willcox Hall and via Zoom (link on WAA home page)
Searching for New Physics in the Universe’s Oldest Light
J. Colin Hill, Ph.D. Columbia University Department of Physics
Dr. Hill will begin with a general review of the state of physical cosmology — what do we know about our universe, and how do we know it? He will then discuss recent and ongoing work focused on attempts to resolve a potential discrepancy amongst some measurements of the current cosmic expansion rate (the “Hubble tension”). He will then describe how this discrepancy could potentially be resolved via the introduction of new physics into our cosmological model around the time of “recombination”, the moment when photons in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) last scattered in the primordial plasma, a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.
He will discuss constraints on these new-physics models derived using the latest CMB data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), as well as new data from Supernova Refsdal just published in May, and will conclude with a look ahead to forthcoming CMB measurements from ACT and the Simons Observatory, which will definitively detect or exclude these scenarios.
Friday, May 12 at 7:30 p.m. LIVE at Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville or VIA ZOOM
Link to the meeting is on the home page
Introduction to Astrophotography Jordan Webber, Senior Vice President, WAA
The hobby of astrophotography has changed radically in the last decade with the introduction of CMOS cameras, specialized accessories and powerful image acquisition and processing software. The learning curve can be steep but every journey stars with a single step. This talk will be aimed primarily at folks who don’t know anything about astrophotography and are thinking about getting started or are just interested in how it works in a general sense. More experienced astrophotographers will benefit from Jordan’s experience and may add their insights during the discussion.
