Join us for this meeting! Special Award presentations, attendance prizes, great hospitality!
Come support your fellow members!
SLAS Regular Meeting
7:30pm Friday, December 16, 2022
Getting into Astrophotography
by
Alan Dyer
Author, lecturer, editor
Shooting the night sky has become hugely popular, not only among amateur astronomers, but also among daytime photographers wanting to extend their craft to night-time scenes. But it is all too easy to be overwhelmed by the choices of equipment and techniques. Alan will review the steps he thinks are best for getting great results simply and with a minimum of expense to begin with. He’ll advise on the mistakes not to make when venturing into astrophotography, and on the best gear to buy when it comes time to upgrade equipment.
Alan Dyer is co-author, with Terence Dickinson, of the popular guidebook The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide, now in its hugely updated fourth edition. Alan is a contributing editor to Sky & Telescope. His images have appeared in many books and calendars, on websites such as SpaceWeather.com, Astronomy Picture of the Day, and in publications such as National Geographic magazine. He is a member of The World At Night group of astrophotographers (See TWANight.org). Asteroid #78434 is named for him. His website is www.amazingsky.com. Also see his blog at www.amazingsky.net and his video channel at https://vimeo.com/channels/amazingsky.
LINK FOR THE MSRAL BY LAWS REVISION DOCUMENT
Upcoming Meetings:
Jan 2023: TBA
Feb 2023: Haojing Yan, PhD, "JWST Early Universe"
Mar 2023: TBA
Apr 2023: Jonathan Katz, PhD. "Fast radio Bursts"
May 2023: William McKinnon, PhD. Missions to Jupiters Moons"
Meeting information:
The meeting will be both in-person AND on Zoom.
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are not a member of SLAS, simply send a request to the following email: contactus @ slasonline.org
McDonnell Hall is past Wrighten Way and before you get to the greenhouses on Forsyth. Entrance faces away from the street. Look for the A-frame sign!
Parking: All yellow spaces are free after 5 on Friday. There is a parking garage at Wrighten Way 700 feet east which is free after 5. (Park in yellow spaces) There are 18 yellow spaces along Forsyth. There are also yellow spaces by the greenhouses 600ft west. There are also 2 electric vehicle charging stations available. There are also charging stations in the parking garages. DO NOT park in any space designated as RED parking.
Here are some map links: McDonnell hall is part of the Danforth campus
Maps, Directions and Parking Map showing parking
Agenda
- Speaker: Alan Dyer, "Getting Started in Astrophotography"
- SLAS Special Recognition Awards. Each year SLAS honors members who have been selected to received an award in special categories. (1) The Albert M. Obrecht, Founders Award; (2) The Lois D. Fitter Outreach Award; (3) The Richard D. Schwartz Supportive Faculty Award; (4) The Robert E. Cox Popular Astronomy Award; (5) The Alfred L. Woods Mentoring Award.
- SLAS Anniversary Awards - See Nov Newsletter
- Proposed 2023 Budget - See December Newsletter
- Proposed Revisions to MSRAL By-Laws
- Solstice Attendance Prizes: 2 Celestron Binocular tripod adapters; 1 Moon Filter set 1 ¼”; 1 lens cleaning kit; 2 Red Light Night Pro readers; 2 Star Date Subscriptions
Telescopes for Sale!
Meade 4.5" GEM mount reflector 1.25" focuser $100 obo
Shirts and Mugs for sale!
Social Hour - 30 min after meeting conclusion or 10:30 Which ever is earlier.
Randy Harrison's Lookin' Up Optics page: http://lookinup.info/
Here are the websites that Dr. Gokhale mentioned in his talk in June
Dark Sky Missouri
www.darkskymissouri.org
Video: 'Saving the Dark' A film on Light Pollution by Sriram Murali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fHxNn-FEnc
Globe at Night program for light pollution
Abigail Bollenbach is the host for a new series hosted by
Astronomy Magazine called Infinity and Beyond!
Below are two videos, one introducing Abby
and the other the first episode of the series! Enjoy!
Introduction with Dave Eicher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A84LG03Tn5Y
First Episode of Infinity and Beyond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUF3v8_-VQ
Shirts and Mugs for Sale
All shirts are $10!!!
Moon Shirt
Globular Cluster Shirt
Pleiades Shirt
There is also a Dobsonian shirt
New Poster from Guy Ottwell you might be interested in
It's called the Zodiac Wavy Chart
https://www.universalworkshop.com/zodiac-wavy-charts/?mc_cid=cfa6f33be8&mc_eid=9d6fcdbdfa
MSRAL 2022 Was Fantastic!
Click here for Group Shots
Thanks to All Who Helped Make it Happen!
Thanks to All Who Attended!
Been craving interaction?
SLAS Regular Meeting
7:30pm Friday, November 18, 2022
The PAH Revolution: Cold, Dark Carbon at the Earliest Stages of Star Formation
by
Dr. Brett McGuire
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been implicated as a large reservoir of reactive carbon in the interstellar medium since the 1980s. PAHs have been widely attributed as the carriers of the unidentified infrared bands where their aggregate vibrational emission spectra are extremely well matched to the observed line signals. Only in the last year have individual PAHs been detected in the ISM for the first time, however, allowing us to begin to investigate the detailed chemical pathways for the formation and destruction of these molecules. In this talk, Dr. McGuire will discuss our detections of PAH molecules via their rotational transitions using Green Bank Telescope observations of TMC-1 from the GOTHAM collaboration. Dr. McGuire will discuss the efforts to model the chemistry of these PAHs, the necessity of complementary laboratory kinetics work, our application of novel machine learning approaches to exploring the chemical inventory in TMC-1, and finally the benefits of unbiased reaction screening studies in the laboratory with Microwave Spectral Taxonomy.
Dr. Brett McGuire received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2014. He was a National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) Jansky Fellow and then a NASA Hubble Fellow from 2014-2020 at the NRAO and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. In 2020, he started a faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is now the Class of 1943 Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Research in the McGuire Group uses the tools of physical chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, and observational astrophysics to understand how the chemical ingredients for life evolve with and help shape the formation of stars and planets.
Upcoming Meetings:
December: Alan Dyer, Astrophotography
SLAS Regular Meeting
7:30pm Friday, November 18, 2022
The PAH Revolution: Cold, Dark Carbon at the Earliest Stages of Star Formation
by
Dr. Brett McGuire
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been implicated as a large reservoir of reactive carbon in the interstellar medium since the 1980s. PAHs have been widely attributed as the carriers of the unidentified infrared bands where their aggregate vibrational emission spectra are extremely well matched to the observed line signals. Only in the last year have individual PAHs been detected in the ISM for the first time, however, allowing us to begin to investigate the detailed chemical pathways for the formation and destruction of these molecules. In this talk, Dr. McGuire will discuss our detections of PAH molecules via their rotational transitions using Green Bank Telescope observations of TMC-1 from the GOTHAM collaboration. Dr. McGuire will discuss the efforts to model the chemistry of these PAHs, the necessity of complementary laboratory kinetics work, our application of novel machine learning approaches to exploring the chemical inventory in TMC-1, and finally the benefits of unbiased reaction screening studies in the laboratory with Microwave Spectral Taxonomy.
Dr. Brett McGuire received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2014. He was a National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) Jansky Fellow and then a NASA Hubble Fellow from 2014-2020 at the NRAO and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. In 2020, he started a faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is now the Class of 1943 Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Research in the McGuire Group uses the tools of physical chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, and observational astrophysics to understand how the chemical ingredients for life evolve with and help shape the formation of stars and planets.
Upcoming Meetings:
December: Alan Dyer, Astrophotography
SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, October 21, 2022
Unveiling the Universe with the Webb Space Telescope
by
Dr. Nathalie Nguyen-Quoc Ouellette
Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) and the
Mont-Mégantic Observatory at the University of Montréal
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the successor to the still-active Hubble Space Telescope. JWST is the largest telescope ever sent to space. It “sees” the infra-red Universe, which is invisible to us, but which we can sense as heat. This view gives it the capacity to see farther into our Universe, peer through the cosmic dust sprinkled throughout galaxies, and probe new alien worlds. JWST is an international collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The first images released offer a preview of some of its future discoveries.
Nathalie Ouellette is an astrophysicist and science communicator. She obtained her Ph.D. in Physics & Astronomy at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario in 2016. Her research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, particularly of galaxies found in clusters. Dr. Ouellette is currently the Deputy Director of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) and the Mont-Mégantic Observatory at the University of Montréal. She is also the Outreach Scientist for JWST in Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency. She participates in science outreach events, from local to international scales, to encourage interest in space science and to increase scientific literacy in Canada.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, September 16, 2022
Tracking Exoplanets From Home
by
Laurie and Kimberly Sibbald
Calgary, Alberta
Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. They are difficult to detect, both because they only reflect light and because they lie within the glare of the stars they orbit. One detection technique involves measuring the dip in starlight during an exoplanet transit. The transit occurs when the planet’s orbit carries it between our line of sight and its star. The amount of starlight blocked can indicate the exoplanet’s size and sometimes other characteristics. Telescopes and special cameras and instruments are now available to amateur astronomers that can allow them to detect exoplanets using their own equipment. Laurie Sibbald will explain how he has already measured a number of exoplanet transits. One of the most important new technology advances is the development of cooled CMOS imaging cameras that allow even modest aperture telescopes to produce data for faint stars.
Mr. Sibbald explains, “… we can measure transits not only of well established ‘confirmed’ planets around distant stars but also new candidate planets. Examples will be shown of a few of these including exoplanet candidates newly identified by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).”
Kimberly Sibbald is an experienced landscape photographer. She also does nightscapes, including wide-field Milky Way scenes. She is now extending her work to include photography of stars, nebulae, and galaxies. Laurie Sibbald is an astrophotographer with expertise in digital image processing
Upcoming Meetings:
October: JWST Nathalie Ouellette
November: Brett McGuire, MIT
December: Alan Dyer, Astrophotography
Upcoming events
This Saturday, September 17 - First Annual Dobson-Fest!!
Click here for information! Dobson-Fest
Been craving interaction? Come join us this month at the Planetarium in Forest Park!
SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, August 19, 2022
McDonnell Planetarium in Forest Park
Webb’s First Look at the Universe
A Panel Discussion
A panel discussion about the recently released images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program will be featured at the August meeting of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society. Doors will open at 7 pm and the meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, August 19 under the 80-foot dome of the St. Louis Science Center’s McDonnell Planetarium in Forest Park. The McDonnell Planetarium address is 5100 Clayton Avenue in Forest Park. Free parking is available in the Planetarium parking lot. The event can also be viewed via Zoom online conference. To request Zoom access please send email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.
In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, December 25, 2021, a rocket carrying the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched. By the end of January 2022, the JWST had traveled more than 1.4 million kilometers (930,000 miles) to its final orbit. Telescope alignment and instrument calibration was completed in late-April. On July 11th and 12th, the first JWST images were released to the public. The first objects studied by JWST were exo-planets, dying stars and stellar birth places inside our Milky Way galaxy, and colliding galaxies and infant galaxies seen when the universe was 13 billion years younger than it is today. What do those images mean? What questions will JWST answer during its lifespan? A panel of local space enthusiasts will present their initial thoughts on the amazing images from James Webb Space Telescope office.
The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. The public is invited to attend its meetings, telescope observing sessions, and special events. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org, or call 314- 962-9231. #UnfoldtheUniverse, #NASAWebb
Upcoming Meetings:
September: Laurie Sibbald, Topic TBA
October: JWST Nathalie Ouellette
November: Brett McGuire, MIT
December: Alan Dyer, Astrophotography
Upcoming events
Producing Tours of the Night Sky
by
Bill Breeden and Chris Hanson
SLAS
Bill Breeden and Chris Hanson of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society will be featured at the July meeting of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, July 15 in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63105. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Free yellow zone and garage parking spaces are available. The event will also be available via Zoom online conference. Zoom access information is posted on the Society’s website, www.slasonline.org . The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.
Astronomy software is a very useful tool for exploring the night sky, for both novice and advanced amateur astronomers, as well as for the general public. For the past two years, Mr. Breeden has produced a YouTube tour each month of one of the eighty-eight constellations that cover the entire night sky. He traces out the brighter stars and shows viewers how to locate the constellation. He also indicates some of the interesting astronomical objects – double stars, star clusters interstellar nebulae, and galaxies – that lie within the constellation’s boundary. He will review his production process and a few basics of the Stellarium software. He will also talk about recording videos and creating a YouTube channel. Stellarium is a free open source planetarium program for computers, tablets, and smart phones. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what can be seen with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. More information on Stellarium can be at http://stellarium.org .
Mr. Hanson will provide an explanation about how to modify Stellarium to add personalized landscapes and custom Oculars Add-in tabs.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Announcements
Parking, Food Policy, Telescope Sales
Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Bill Breeden, Chris Hanson
-August Meeting
-Dobson-Fest
-Fall Speakers
-Telescope Sales
Bill Breeden YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/williambreeden4
Upcoming Meetings:
August: JWST Panel Discussion at SLSC
September: Laurie Sibbald, Topic TBA
October: JWST Nathalie Ouellette
November: Brett McGuire, MIT
December: Alan Dyer, Astrophotography
Friday, June 17, 2022 7:30pm
The Sun, Moon & Milky Way
by
Nearly 1,000 years ago, a vibrant Cahokian community filled the entire Chesterfield Valley. Like Cahokia, this civic, ceremonial, and market center was precisely planned and constructed to reflect important celestial alignments of the sun, moon, and Milky Way. Though only a small portion of the community has been professionally studied, over 100,0000 artifacts have been discovered, including exotic materials from the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. A massive Calendar of the Sun, involving three temples and two earthen pyramids stretched 3.56 miles across the valley. Cahokia in Chesterfield has been the focus of professional archaeological research for over 70 years. Research is ongoing, and most excitingly, the very heart of the ancient city lies well preserved under six feet of flood deposited soil.
Mark Leach is a local author and Native American burial mound preservationist. He serves as the Restoration & Research Coordinator of the Blake Mound & Cave Site and as a long-standing trustee of the Missouri Archaeological Society. He promotes and coordinates archaeological research throughout the region and hopes this presentation will inspire SLAS members to begin looking for possible celestial alignments in the greater Chesterfield Valley, as well as the lost Cahokian centers at St. Louis and East St. Louis.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Announcements
Parking, Food Policy, Telescope Sales
Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Mark Leach
-MSRAL Recap
-August Meeting
-Dobson-Fest
-July Speaker
-Special Award Nominations
-Telescope Sales
-NSN pins
-Attendance prizes
Friday, May 20, 2022 7:30pm
by
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
George Silvis is a member of AAVSO and a participant in the Super Nova Early Warning System (SNEWS).
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are a non-member of SLAS,
simply send a request to the following email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - George Silvis
SLAS Elections: May elections
Vote on motion to purchase eclipse glasses
Telescope Sale
MSRAL Conference Info and Request for Volunteers
Friday, April 15, 2022 7:30pm
by
Asteroids are chunks of metal, rock, or metal/rock mixtures that orbit the Sun. Most orbit in the “Main Belt” between Mars and Jupiter, but a few have elongated paths that cross Earth’s orbit. Most are less than a few miles across. They are typically shades of gray, but instruments attached to large telescopes reveal slight coloring. The large, 98 inches across, telescope used for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) recorded changes in color for some asteroids. Mr. Linder has been studying the SDSS color variability for over five years as part of his Ph.D thesis research. He will present the current understanding of this problem and the planned observing method to be able to answer the question, “Do main-belt asteroids change color?”
Tyler Linder Tyler is a Ph.D candidate at the University of North Dakota. For the past decade he has managed the Astronomical Research Institute’s southern hemisphere facet of their Near-Earth Asteroid observations program at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are a non-member of SLAS,
simply send a request to the following email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Tyler Linder
SLAS Elections: Nominations for May elections
May 15th Lunar Eclipse Presentation - Mark Jones
MSRAL Conference Info and Request for Volunteers
Upcoming events
Homemade Fest Saturday, April 23 at Kirkwood Community Center!
Friday, March 18, 2022 7:30pm
by
Michael E. Lockwood
Michael E. Lockwood of Lockwood Custom Optics will be featured at the March meeting of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will be held via Zoom online conference only. The meeting and lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 18. Zoom access information is posted on the Society’s website, www.slasonline.org. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.
Mirror making of the 21st Century has advanced to the point that mirrors are larger but more compact than ever before. To accomplish this, modern professional mirror makers are using state-of-the-art techniques and equipment to shape the concave surface of the mirrors. They achieve accuracies not possible for amateur or commercial telescope makers. Michael Lockwood, will discuss some of the equipment and techniques he uses to make some of the best telescope mirrors ever produced for the amateur and professional astronomer.
Michael Lockwood worked as a research engineer at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois from 2000 until 2009. He founded Lockwood Custom Optics in 2006, specializing in making custom telescope mirrors. In 2009, he left his engineering position to become a full-time professional optician. Mike has been involved with building tens of telescopes, up to 50" in aperture. He has taught telescope making and mirror making classes and written articles for Sky & Telescope and Amateur Astronomy Magazine.
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are a non-member of SLAS,
simply send a request to the following email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Michael Lockwood
MSRAL Conference Info and Request for Volunteers
Volunteer Training
Upcoming events
Friday, February 18, 2022 7:30pm
by
Kazu Akiyama
MIT Haystack Radio Observatory
In April 2019 the first images of a black hole were released by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) global consortium. The first image showed a bright ring of energy enclosing the shadow of the supermassive black hole Messier 87* (M87*). The black hole is lurking at the center of M87, a huge galaxy located 53 million light years away. New images from the EHT map polarized radio waves that trace out the structure of the black hole’s very strong magnetic field. The EHT is a global network of large radio telescopes. Its “images” are produced by combining the radio wave observations of the individual telescopes. EHT can see a level of detail equivalent to a single telescope as wide as the Earth. Dr. Akiyama will present an overview of the EHT. He will talk about major breakthroughs that made these images possible and what these images have revealed about the nature of supermassive black holes.
Dr. Kazu Akiyama is a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts. His primary research interest involves the extreme environment in the vicinity of black holes. He uses radio telescope observations that employ the technique of very long baseline interferometry. He joined the team of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2010, and has led the Imaging Working Group of the EHT Collaboration since its establishment in 2017.
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are a non-member of SLAS,
simply send a request to the following email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Kazu Akiyama
NSN Outreach Pin Presentations
Upcoming events
Friday, January 21, 2022 7:30pm
by
Explore Scientific
McDonald Observatory and many partners are working to establish the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve (DSR) in the Big Bend region of Far West Texas and Northern Mexico. Once completed and certified by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), the reserve will encompass over 15,000 square miles of land and be among the largest reserves of its kind in the world, and help to preserve the night sky for decades to come. We'll discuss the many lessons learned during this project and tips on how to mitigate light pollution in your own neighborhood.
Stephen Hummel works at the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, TX on issues related to light pollution and community outreach. Stephen is an astrophotographer in his spare time. Prior to moving to West Texas in 2018, Stephen lived in St. Louis and was active in the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri.
To get the link to the zoom conference if you are a non-member of SLAS,
simply send a request to the following email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Agenda
Social hour 7:00-7:30
7:30 - Introductions - Officers and Visitors
Speaker - Stephen Hummel
Special Awards Presentations
Mark Jones: 2022 Events
Budget
Upcoming events