In person at Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville, AND on-line via Zoom

The Night of the Shooting Stars

Joe Rao
Associate and Guest Lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium, Contributing Editor for Sky & Telescope

In 1995 Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 broke apart in dramatic fashion. Now a number of meteor dynamicists have confirmed what Joe Rao predicted last year: a stream of particles ejected during the comet’s disruption may yield a dramatic meteor outburst at the end of May 2022. The predictions are uncertain because no one knows for sure how fast the concentrated dust swarm left 73P’s disintegrating nucleus. But there is a chance that we could see meteors briefly fall at rates numbering in the scores or maybe even in the hundreds per hour! In this presentation, Joe will explain the reasons why late on the night of May 30th, you may see more shooting stars than you’ve seen in your entire life!

For 21 years, Joe Rao was the Chief Meteorologist and Science Editor at News 12 Westchester. He was nominated for 8 Emmy Awards and in 2015 was voted first among weathercasters in New York State by the Associated Press. Since 1986 he has served as an associate and guest lecturer at the Hayden . He is a contributing editor for Sky & and writes a syndicated weekly column for the online news service space.com. He also pens a monthly astronomy column for Natural History magazine and provides annual astronomical data for The Farmers’ Almanac. Joe is a long-time friend of WAA.

David Pecker Conference Room, Willcox Hall, Pace University, Pleasantville,
or on-line via Zoom
(see home page for link and instructions for live attendance)

The Amazing Variability of T Tauri Stars
FRED WALTer
Department of Astronomy, SUNY Stony Brook

The T Tauri stars are young pre-main sequence stars of about Solar mass, with ages of a few million years. They are protostars – still collapsing from their natal dust clouds and not yet stably fusing Hydrogen in their cores. As indicated by the namesake of the class, these are variable stars. But all stars, including the Sun, are variable. What is so special about the T Tauri stars?

The talk will summarize some recent observations of pre-main sequence stars, motivated in large part by the high cadence, long term monitoring afforded by TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Although designed to find exoplanet transits, TESS watches about 8% of the sky at any one time continuously for about 27 days, so it sees everything.

From above the atmosphere there are no day/night cycles, no weather to interrupt observations, and no twinkling except what the stars do on their own. TESS observations of stellar variability, coupled with ground-based spectroscopy, have given us fantastic new insights into the environments of these protostars.

Professor Walter has a PhD is in Astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley, has been teaching astronomy at Stony Brook University since 1989. He studies the birth and death of stars and stellar magnetic activity (stellar weather) using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Hawaii, and in Earth orbit.

On-line via Zoom

Comets, Asteroids and Near-Earth Objects
Steve Bellavia
Brookhaven National Labs & Suffolk Community College

Steve will discuss comets, asteroids and Near Earth Objects that have been discovered in the last several years, including visitors from other star systems as well as close neighbors that pose potential hazards, crossing Earth’s orbit every several years.

Steven Bellavia is an amateur astronomer and telescope maker.  He is an aerospace engineer who worked for Grumman Aerospace with the Group of the Space Division. He performed the analysis, design and fabrication of the micro-gravity liquid droplet radiator that flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-029. Steve has been at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1992 and was the principal mechanical engineer for the camera on the Vera Rubin (formerly called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, LSST).

Steve 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 Lecture Friday, February 11 at 7:30 pm via Zoom

Diurnal, Seasonal, and Inter-Annular Variations of Gases in the Mars Atmosphere
Br. Robert Novak, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, Iona College

The NASA Infrared Telescope is a 3.2-meter telescope located on top of Mauna Kea (4200 m above sea level) on the Big Island of Hawaii. iSHELL is a high resolution (R > 70,000) infrared spectrometer that was installed on the telescope in September 2016. Spectral/spatial images taken by iSHELL can detect gases in Mars’s atmosphere such as water (both H2O and HDO), carbon dioxide, and methane. Searches have been conducted for other organic gases, such as ethane and propane, but up to now, only methane has been positively detected. Since January 2017, Br. Novak has taken data to measure these gases during Mars’ early northern winter (January 2017, Mars Year 33), mid-northern summer (MY 34), mid-northern winter (MY 35), and early northern spring (MY 36). He will discuss the detection and variation of these gases in the course of a day, from season to season, and from one year to the next.

Br. Robert Novak was Chair of Physics at Iona. He works with the NASA Astrobiology group at Goddard Spaceflight Center, and has published a number of important papers on the Martian atmosphere and evidence for an ocean on Mars in the distant past.

On-line via Zoom. 7:30 p.m.

Building a Gravitational Wave Telescope out of Stars

Tyler Cohen, BSc
Graduate Research Assistant, New Mexico Tech

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime. A consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, they were first detected from inspiraling black holes in 2015 by LIGO. Now, another observatory is on the verge of detecting gravitational waves of a different sort. Its detector is the size of the Milky Way galaxy and constructed from some of the most exotic stars in the universe. Tyler will discuss how the North American Nano-hertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves uses pulsar timing to search for low-frequency gravitational waves, and the premier radio telescopes that this work has brought him to.

Tyler Cohen is a PhD student at New Mexico Tech and a tour guide at the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. A Westchester native and former WAA member, he went on to receive his BSc. in physics and astronomy at Stony Brook University. He has since worked at the Gemini Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

VIA ZOOM

Massimo Capasso, Ph.D.
Columbia University & VERITAS Array at Fred Whipple Observatory, Arizona

Single-photon technologies for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy

 Gamma rays from space can reach energies up to several trillion times those of visible light, in dramatically explosive phenomena that shape the Universe as we know it. At these energies, the observable fluxes so low that very large collection areas or long observing times are needed to reach a significant detection. For both these reasons, space-born instruments are not suited for the detection of Very-High-Energy (VHE) gamma rays; instead, ground-based observatories can exploit the atmosphere as a huge detector to observe VHE gamma rays indirectly. The light that is emitted as a by-product of the interaction of gamma rays and the atmosphere is very faint and very fast (on the scale of billionths of seconds). Therefore, extremely sensitive detectors coupled with fast electronics are the enabling technology for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy.

In this talk, Dr. Capasso will present an overview of the physics that produces VHE gamma rays in space, of how to detect them on the ground and of the latest single-photon solid-state technology that enables such technique: Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs).

On-line via Zoom
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81808419156?pwd=WUxkZDg1a1YyUWVSd2NZN1JqWVVmdz09

Magnetic Anomalies on the Moon

Dany Waller

Graduate Student, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Swirls are a unique class of lunar features. They occur across all types of terrain on the Moon and are associated with strong magnetic anomalies. Although the Moon does not currently have an active magnetic field like Earth, it may have had one in the past. The current magnetic anomalies may be left over from that time. Magnetic fields can provide radiation protection from the solar wind, influencing physical and chemical properties of lunar soil.

New Horizons and the Solar System’s 3rd Zone

Will Grundy, PhD

Planetary Scientist, Lowell Observatory
Co-Investigator, New Horizons mission

Dr. Grundy does spectroscopic, thermal, and imaging observations of outer Solar System bodies using numerous large ground- and space-based telescopes including Hubble, Keck, Gemini, DCT, IRTF, and MMT. He headed the surface composition science theme team on New Horizons. Dr. Grundy will discuss the astonishing scientific results from this mission, and how our view of the solar system has changed as a result.

Friday, September 10th
Venue TBD: Either via Zoom or live at Pace University

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.

Roman Tytla at WAA Members’ Night

Via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/99588774272?pwd=YXBIUXAySDdEZEZtQUo4TmY3UUtHUT09
Meeting ID: 995 8877 4272, Passcode: 239178

Citizen Science
Rick Bria, Astronomical Society of Greenwich and WAA Member

Rick will discuss how amateur astronomers can contribute to the scientific understanding of astronomical phenomena, including occultation timing, spectroscopy and exoplanet transits. Rick directs the observatory at the Sacred Heart School in Greenwich.