AAC volunteers needed for a Stargazing Outreach @ Hickory Ranch.
Volunteer members with and without telescopes please register here for entry to the event and for updates. I can still put volunteers to work even if you don't have a telescope!
A GO or NO GO will be emailed to registrants the day of the event. You need to be registered for me to send you updates!!
Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park is hosting an outreach for stargazing by the Alachua Astronomy Club, weather permitting, at Hickory Ranch.
Visitors (not AAC volunteers) need to register with Friends of Paynes Prairie at their website then click events for registration.
Please plan on being set up by 5:30 pm. Sunset is at 5:34 pm. Event is scheduled to start at 6:00 pm and finish at 9:00 pm. We may go a bit later if weather is accommodating.
Volunteers should arrive no later than 5:00 pm. Pick out several sky objects and note a few details about them to share. Limited ac power is available with a long extension cord if needed. Temps fall after dark so dress warmly.
Point of contact for Alachua Astronomy Club is Lisa Eager, Star Party Coordinator @ 352-318-4074.
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: Dr. Jeff Dror, Assistant Physics Professor, UF
Title: Gravitational Wave Detection
Abstract:
Understanding the evolution of the Universe requires finding particles ejected during different epochs. We have already detected two classes of such cosmic fossils: microwave photons and light nuclei. While we have learned a great deal from these discoveries, they have left significant gaps in our knowledge of the cosmic history since the Big Bang. Dr. Dror’s presentation will focus on detecting new cosmic fossils in the form of axions and gravitational waves.
About the Speaker:
UF Physics Department, 2023-present
UC Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, (Post Doc), 2020-2023
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2017-2020
Research Interests:
In his research, Dr. Dror focuses on gravitational wave detection in the nHz regime (10-1000 billion times lower frequency than those detected by the LIGO experiment). The most promising way to detect such gravitational waves is by tracking the arrival times of light pulses from nearby stars known as pulsars. There is an ongoing international effort to detect a signal in the nHz range, and his work focuses on extending their sensitivity to the pHz-nHz regime. This requires developing new ways to analyze the pulsar light data.
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements 7:15 - 7:30 Members Corner:
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: Dr. Adam Ginsburg, Associate Professor, UF
Title: Molecular Interstellar Medium
He studies the formation of the most massive stars and how their formation process affects their neighbors, with the aim of understanding what physical processes control the stellar initial mass function. He uses primarily radio and millimeter telescopes to measure the molecular interstellar medium, which is the gas phase from which stars form. Turbulence and chemistry are the two most important and least understood processes that affect both how the stars form and how we detect their birth environments, so his research includes these fields by necessity. He is also interested in the maintenance and development of new tools to facilitate observational astronomy and comparison between simulations and observations.
Speaker: Dr. Eric Perlman
Title: Active Galactic Nuclei
Dr. Perlman came to Florida Tech in 2007 after postdoctoral fellowships at Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute, as well as research staff and research faculty positions at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Dr. Perlman is an observational astrophysicist whose research concentrates on the nuclei of galaxies, their physics and evolution, particularly those in which the central black hole has a large rate of accretion and is abnormally active (the so-called active galactic nuclei). He was a member of the AGN science team for CanariCam, a first-light instrument for the Gran Telescopio Canarias, and is now a science team member for MIRADAS, one of the GTC's third-generation instruments.
Dr. Perlman specializes in the structure and physics of high-velocity outflows from compact objects and AGN, particularly, jets. He has a strong interest in clusters of galaxies, galactic activity in clusters and observational cosmology. He has taken an active interest in the intersection of quantum gravity and astrophysics. He takes a multiwaveband approach to these subjects, and has worked in virtually every energy range from the radio through gamma-rays. He is interested in the process of accretion, including events that can temporarily make black holes active (tidal disruption events). He pursues interests in astrobiology, particularly the impact of active black holes on habitable planets.
