| 2010 December 11 Holiday Social December 1 General Meeting "The Physics of Star Trek and Star Wars - Fantasy or Feasibility" by Tom Eason "Beam Me Up, Scotty," "Warp speed", wormholes, light sabers. Are they possible or are they figments of science- fiction writers’ overactive imaginations? What do we know about present-day physics that can help us make intelligent guesses about the future? Tom described how modern science views these futuristic capabilities. November 15 CIG November 3 "The International Space Station" by Nick Poppelreiter Nick, who is an NASA Ambassador gave a virtual tour of the International Space Station, Mission Control, the Automated Transfer Vehicle program, and future programs. October 11 Blue Canyon Observing Trip 21 LHAG members traveled to the dark skies of Blue Canyon to observe the sky with telescopes and binoculars. Objects viewed included constellations, double stars, the Andromeda Galaxy, The Great Hercules Globular Star Cluster, The Ring Nebula, the Perseus Double Cluster, and may other deep sky objects. October 6 General Meeting "Exploring the Planets" by Anthony Oreglia LHAG member Anthony Oreglia described the space missions that have gone to the planets in our solar system and the results of those missions. September 28 Exploring the Night Sky 2-Day Mini-Class 7-9 PM at OC Lodge and October 11 at Blue Canyon September 20 CIG September 1 General Meeting "Jupiter's Galilean Moons" by Nina Mazzo Nina took us on a tour of Io, Europa,Ganymede and Callisto and explores these unique worlds that hold the possibility of frozen oceans, micro organisms and surprises yet to be discovered. September 2 Binocular Interest Group (BIG) Viewing with binoculars at a site in Lincoln Hills - No experience necessary. Contact Joel Thomas analemma93@yahoo.com or Nina Mazzo ninamazzo@sbcglobal.net August 20 Astronomy Group Potluck Social Potluck at Kilaga Springs Lodge August 16 CIG August 12 Binocular Interest Group (BIG) Viewing with binoculars at a site in Lincoln Hills - No experience necessary. Contact Joel Thomas analemma93@yahoo.com or Nina Mazzo ninamazzo@sbcglobal.net August 4 Sierra College Planetarium Field Trip by Professor Dick Marasso Dick Marasso hosted LHAG and guests for a special evening in the Sierra College Planetarium. Using the planetarium sky, Dick reviewed some of the popular summer objects and events coming up in August2010. His presentation included examples of the three essential elements that have allowed astronomers to study the known universe - Radiation, Time and Motion. June 2 General Meeting "The Cosmic Distance Scale" by Dave Wood How do we know the distance to remote galaxies? By a series of stepping stones and extrapolations from basic triangulation of the nearest stars, via galactic clusters, cepheid variables, supernovae, and red shifts. Dave described how we evolve from reliably known distances (by triangulation) to estimates of distances to the most remote galaxies in the universe. May 5 General Meeting "Paradigm Shift and the End of the Cretaceous - What Happened to the Dinosaurs?" by John Neil Since the early part of the nineteenth century, a basic mantra of geology was that change was always slow and incremental. The discovery that an asteroid impact caused the iridium anomaly at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary and an extinction of a significant percentage of life resulted in a paradigm shift that long periods of slow and incremental change could be punctuated by a cataclysmic event. John worked in an adjacent lab to the group that unraveled the event and took part in the discussions as they developed the case that the impact occurred. April 7 General Meeting "A Wide-Spectrum Look at the Universe" by Tom Eason In the 1980's NASA promulgated a "Great Observatories" program, designed to provide a group of four satellites that would cover the electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to the far infrared frequencies. One of these is the Hubble Space Telescope, which has produced beautiful and scientifically valuable imagery in the visual frequency range. Attention to the other three has largely been confined to the scientific community, where valuable advances in understanding our universe have been enabled by the imagery gathered by their sensors. Tom described the remaining three satellites, their missions, and display interesting, and scientifically useful imagery, and discussed results produced by the three. March 3 General Meeting "The Universe from My Backyard" by Ken Crawford Ken Crawford’s images have been featured in numerous magazines, books, websites, movies, and public displays. In this presentation, “The Universe from My Backyard,” Ken provided an overview of the equipment, methods, and challenges in obtaining high resolution deep sky images. He showed how amateurs achieve professional results by combining art and technology. (IAC) searching for galactic tidal streams which are the remnants of galaxy mergers. This Galactic Archaeology shows that big science can be done by amateurs with modest equipment. February 3 General Meeting "The Dark Side of the Universe" - A Scientific American PBS Program moderated by Morey Lewis New discoveries about Dark Matter and Dark Energy have astronomers wondering if ours is but one of an infinity of universes. Morey Lewis was the moderator for an Alan Alda PBS presentation, "The Dark Side of the Universe." Alda interviews leading astronomers seeking answers and explanations for dark energy and dark matter. January 18 CIG January 6 General Meeting "Radio Astronomy" "Text" by Nicki Koch Radio Astronomy studies celestial objects by measuring the radio waves they emit. The pictures which emerge are not similar to the optical appearance in any way. This science has enabled the detection and study of pulsars, quasars, and radio galaxies and contributed to the discovery of cosmic background radiation. |
