Telescope workshop Zoom meetings Tuesdays 730p-9p. Contact: President at SBAU.org to join in! Videos: Recorded Meetings & Zooms on Youtube.com Photos: Outreach & other photo albums on Flickr.com
March 2024 Newsletter
The SBAU March 1, 2024 "First Friday" meeting will be a remote
presentation by "SkyMan" Bob Berman with the title "Where [in
the heck] is the Universe". We saw an excellent recorded
presentation last October, but this time our tested Zoom link
will bring him live to us from near Woodstock, NY. Check
out Bob's book
"Zoom" that received a NY Times rave review. Matt Povich Cal Poly Ponoma bio Our First Friday meeting October 6, 2023 did not go as planned due to communication problems. But we found a very interesting Youtube video of our scheduled speaker, Bob Berman, to play for our Farrand Hall & Zoom audience. He is an astronomer, and prolific science writer for Astronomy.com, Almanac.com, and several books. He will join us live at a later date. amazon.com/stores/author/B000AP9C6S Our First Friday meeting September 1, 2023 was John Callas, Ph.D. Brown Univ, 1987, with the topic: "The UNIVERSE is so LARGE & so DARK - Living within the 95% of DARK MATTER & DARK ENERGY". Works at JPL-NASA on advanced spacecraft propulsion, was Project Manager Mars Opportunity, plus astrophysics instrumentation. Organized May 2023 NASA Fundamental Physics Workshop here in SB. see: https://youtube/John-Callas-Dark-Matter Our First Friday meeting August 4, 2023, was a presentation by Peter Love on the "James Webb Space Telescope: A Window Into the Universe’s Past". Peter was Systems engineer for JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument Detector at the Raytheon Hyperspectral Module Program. see: https://youtube/Peter-Love-re-James-Webb Our First Friday meeting July 7, 2023 had a presentation by Sahil Hegde of UCLA, a member of the Furlanetto Group looking at the early universe "Cosmic Dawn", Pop III low "metal" monster stars. Recorded: https://youtube/Sahil-Hegde-Cosmic-Dawn First Friday meeting June 2, 2023, was a presentation by Dr. Robert "Ski" Antonucci, UCSB Professor of Astrophysics and Cosmology on "Supermassive Black Holes and Quasar behavior - still Mysterious to us" [click - Youtube recording]. Also, see these articles: -"Quasars still defy explanation" by Robert Antonucci -"An Identity Problem" UCSB - The Current -Unified model of an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) Research of Robert Antonucci into AGN's First Friday meeting May 5, 2023, was a presentation by Joseph Farah, an award winning graduate student at UCSB, also working with the Las Cumbres Observatory. He is listed as the lead author of the paper describing the imaging of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way using the Event Horizon Telescope. See more about Mr. Farah here: https://josephfarah.co/# and the imaging here: https://lco.global/news/Milky-Way-black-hole Meeting recorded: SBAU Youtube...skip first 20 minutes First Friday meeting April 7, 2023, presentation by UCLA Post-Doc Daniel Gilman, reaching us via Zoom from Toronto, Canada. He will cover the latest information on Dark Energy and Dark Matter detected using Gravitational Lensing. Meeting recorded: SBAU Channel Daniel Gilman First Friday meeting March 3, 2023, 730pm, had a presentation by Rafael Stavros Cottom, the Lead Astronomy Programs Presenter at the SBMNH, & President, SBCC Astronomy Club, reviewing research on the first generation of stars of a specific group of metal-poor stars. Meeting was not recorded. First Friday Meeting, February 3, 2023, presenter was Joseph "Joe" Bassi, Phd, Fellow Royal Astronomical Society, informing us about "Spaceweather". Meeting was not recorded. First Friday Meeting, January 6, 2023, presenter was our Outreach Coordinator, Chuck McPartlin, showing how asteroid occultations provide information for NASA missions. See the meeting and talk here: https://youtu.be/svPnhShmeXE First Friday "Members Night" Meeting, December 2, 2022, speakers were SBAU President Jerry A. Wilson on "My New Backyard Observatory" and Vice President Ron Herron, "My Astronomy Questions Needing Answers". The club's 2023 Slate of Officers for SBAU Members was approved. See the recording: https://youtu.be/nbSXrlILa0w First Friday November 4, 2022, speaker was Rory O. Bentley, Ph.D., on "The Extreme Realm of the Milky Way's Core!" See recording on our Youtube AstroUnit channel https://youtu.be/sGfC3T5_9mc . https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Rory-O-Bentley First Friday October 7, 2022, speaker was Dr. Claudio Campagnari, Chair of the Department of Physics at UCSB. He described the latest high energy physics at CERN. View his talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8_ns8qr_Kk http://hep.ucsb.edu/people/claudio/CV_short_2022.pdf First Friday, September 2, 2022, speakers were our Museum Astronomy Programs Manager, Krissie Cook, and CalTech Post-Doctoral Researcher, Rocio Kiman, gave us a "Grand Tour of the James Webb [Space Telescope findings] Up to now". View it here: https://youtu.be/fnVPbjGZ2t0 First Friday August 5, 2022, speaker was Claire Williams of UCLA, speaking on "Recent Supersonic Progress on the Foundation of the First Structures in the Universe" . View at Youtube SB AstroUnit channel: https://youtu.be/0HolG_9i3GM. https://www.astro.ucla.edu/~clairewilliams/ First Friday General Meeting, July 1, 2022, was Dr. Rob Zellem on "Exoplanet Atmospheres" https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/301/rob-zellem/ First Friday General Meeting, June 3, 2022, was Ben Darvish on "Evolution of galaxies in diverse environments", see the replay at SB AstroUnit Channel. Ben's astrophotography at: https://www.astrobin.com/users/Astrolab/ and his CV-résumé. First Friday General Meeting, May 6, 2022, was Dr. Timothy Brandt, Asst. Professor, UCSB Physics, presenting "The Mystery of Dark Matter" now saved at the SB AstroUnit Channel. See more on Tim: https://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~tbrandt/ First Friday "Zoom" Meeting, April 1st, 2022, was Mirek Brandt and his topic was "Weighing Exoplanets, Watching the Star". A Ph.D. candidate at UCSB working with Las Cumbres Observatory. See the replay at https://youtu.be/vC75jDooc7U Also see https://www.mirekbrandt.com/ Our First Friday Meeting, March 4, 2022 was Briley Lewis as our speaker. Her topic was "How to take an Exo-planet's Picture". See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JvxPljD9TY . She is a NSF fellow and 3rd year graduate student at UCLA, studying Astronomy and Astrophysics. Also see: http://www.briley-lewis.com. MANY MORE YouTube "SBAstroUnit" meeting videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU0r4RxzoyT_pwNcfN5aJsA/videos
Listing of some of our past speakers since 2008 |
Click for 93105 Wunderground weather forecast Fire & Smoke map: https://fire.airnow.gov PurpleAir pm2.5 etc sensors: https://www.purpleair.com Astrospheric forcast: https://www.astrospheric.com/?Latitude=34.436450958252&Longitude=-119.88289642334 Clear Sky Charts Santa Barbara Cachuma Lake Figueroa Lookout ___________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
SBAU Merchandise Store Ask about our older style club shirts as they may be still available with a steep discount. They make great gifts, so come and buy one or more!. If you have any questions or would like to place an order, please contact Pat McPartlin, Merchandise Manager, at MerchMgr at our website sbau.org. ________________________________________________ Important Astronomy Links Astrobin - fantastic amateur images Astronomy Magazine Astronomy Picture of the Day CloudyNights.com - Equipment discussion forum Current Comets --aerith.net/comet heavens-above.com --satellites+ LiveScience.com NASA.com ---news, images, & details on Missions NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center Phys.org/space-news/ Sky And Telescope Space.com News SpaceDaily.com SpaceWeather.com -- Sun & NEOs https://theskylive.com/ -- Lots here + Solar system 3D ________________________________________________________ Museum of Natural History, Astronomy Programs Manager-retired, Javier Rivera, Interviewed for the Independent "My Life: The Magic of Astronomy" Museum of Natural History Curator Reflects on a Career in the Stars Planetarium Shows & Times at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History _______________________________________________________________ The SBAU ForumRegister NOW at http://www.sbau.org/sbauforum/ . Please also email the webmaster@sbau.org that you would like to join. The Public is more than welcome, start or join a conversation with Santa Barbara area astronomy & telescope club members. (Read your comments out loud before sending and see if your mother would approve hearing that!) Also see the SBAU CLASSIFIEDS SECTION . __________________________________________________ -2nd Tuesday Telescopes, Camino Real Marketplace https://www.caminorealmarketplace.net -2nd Saturday, Star Party, Museum of Natural History https://www.sbnature.org/palmer-observatory -3rd Fridays, Star Party, Westmont College https://www.westmont.edu/westmont-observatory -See our Events Calendar for all of the Outreach
SBAU Telescope Workshop At the Telescope Workshop, we cover types of mirrors and telescopes, but also optics, cameras, and image processing software discussions. We encourage novice astronomers to come, ask questions, and even build, while advanced members are re-invited to attend to show off their work, discuss telescope issues, to help out, or hang out! See photo albums at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbaushots/albums . Check out http://sbautw.blogspot.com for a sample of past weekly Tuesday night sessions at the Broder Building at the Museum. |