Past Meetings 2017

 

Dr. Peter Plavchan will be featured at the January meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, January 20, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Yellow zone and street parking are available to the audience. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

In 1992, the first two planets orbiting another star were detected. In 1995, another was found around a different star. By January 1, 2017, more than 3,500 "exoplanets" have been detected. Most planets have been found indirectly, but a few have been photographed directly. Some exoplanets are roughly the size of Earth. Some may have surface conditions suitable for alien life to develop. Dr. Plavchan will talk about how exoplanets planets are detected and why so many planets have been found during the past few years. He will explain why the 21st century has turned into the "golden age" of exoplanet discovery.

Peter Plavchan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy, Physics, and Materials Science at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. He earned his Doctoral degree in Physics from UCLA. Prior to joining the faculty at Missouri State, he was an Assistant Research Scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at CalTech. His research interests include the study of exoplanets, small cool red stars, planetary formation, and the specialized instruments required for these research areas.

 

CosmoQuest is an organization that sponsors astronomy projects which enable regular citizens to participate in actual scientific research. It seeks to develop a community of people interested in advancing our under standing of the universe by assisting professional astronomers and planetary scientists. With support from NASA, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific hosts the CosmoQuest project. Dr. Gay will talk about the CosmoQuest organization and some of its projects and services. Current "citizen science" projects include mapping the Moon, Mercury, and the dwarf planet Vesta. Participants use images from NASA spacecraft missions to do mapping and image interpretation on their home computers. The results are passed along to NASA-sponsored scientists.

Dr. Pamela Gay is an astronomer, writer, and podcaster focused on using new media to engage people in science and technology. She is the Principal Investigator for the NASA grant to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in support of CosmoQuest.org. She is also a cohost of the weekly Astronomy Cast podcast. She received her Doctorate in astronomy from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2002.

 

 

Dr. Christine Floss of Washington University will be featured at the March meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society.McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Yellow zone and street parking are available to the audience.

Presolar grains are dust-sized particles that are older than the solar system. They formed in stars that existed before our sun was born, and so they can tell us about those stars. Presolar grains provide information about how the heavier elements were created, as well as how stars and galaxies have evolved since they were formed. Dr. Floss will review the history of how presolar grains were discovered and what we have learned from them in the last thirty years.

Christine Floss is a research professor in the Department of Physics at Washington University. Her research focuses on laboratory studies of extraterrestrial materials such as star dust, comet dust, and meteorites to better understand the origin and evolution of the dust cloud from which the sun and planets formed.

 

 

While many craters on the Moon are visible in even small telescopes, craters on the Earth are far fewer and much harder to see. Most of them have been covered up by erosion, movement of the Earth’s surface, and vegetation. Some ancient craters have been uncovered by geologists who have precisely mapped the surface and analyzed unusual rock formations and composition. One such crater, thought to have formed over 340 million years ago, is hidden away in Saint Clair County, Missouri. It is the Weableau Impact Structure, named for the nearby town, which is about 50 miles north-northwest of Springfield, Missouri. Dr. Evans has mapped the central crater and studied the broken and melted rocks formed in that ancient impact. He will talk about how he studies Earth’s ancient craters, and what he has discovered about the Weableau.

 

Kevin Evans is a professor in the Department of Geography, Geology, and Planning at Missouri State University, Springfield, MO. His research interests include meteorite impacts, carbonate depositional systems, and sequence stratigraphy.

 

 

Ms. Kara Kundert of the University of California - Berkeley, will be featured at the May meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, May 19, in McDon-nell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Yellow zone and street parking are available to the audience. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

Our understanding of the first billion years of the universe is hazy. It was during this time that the first stars and galaxies formed. However, we lack the ability to probe the physical nature and understand the detailed conditions of the seeds that have become our current universe. This stage in the history of the universe is called the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). It is the period of time over which hydrogen gas transitioned from being neu-tral to ionized. Studying how and when reionization took place will fill in many of the gaps in our understanding of the formation of the modernday universe. Ms. Kundert will be speaking about some of the current and proposed techniques for observing this exciting period of our universe's history. She will particularly focus on observations in radio wave cosmology, and what they could tell us about the universe we live in.

 

Kara Kundert is a graduate student in the De-partment of Astronomy at UC Berkeley. She is studying the epoch of reionization and a radio telescope technique called radio interferometry. For her thesis, she will be building a low-frequency interferometer with which to observe the 21cm "global signal" of reionization. She will present her lecture from Berkeley via the internet.

 

 

 

Dr. Bruce Wilking will be featured at the July meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, July 21, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Yellow zone and street parking are available to the audience. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

 

Most stars in our Galaxy are born in clusters of a few dozen to a few hundred stars. These cluster stars slowly drift apart and disperse over time. Dr. Wilking and his colleagues have studied the dynamical state of a very young cluster. They see evidence that stellar encounters pump up the relative velocities of the young stars as they emerge from their dense gas cores. Dr. Wilking comments "Evidence is mounting that our Sun formed as part of a cluster that included a massive star that evolved into a supernova. This explains the enrichment of certain elements in meteorites." He will explain how conditions that existed when the very young Sun was part of a star cluster have affected the solar system of today. He will also discuss recent searches for stars with the same age and chemical composition as the Sun's and the possibility that a solar sibling may someday be found.

 

Dr. Bruce Wilking is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His research interests involve star formation and the study of the clouds of dust and gas from which stars form. He has been a member of the UMSL Physics & Astronomy Department and St. Louis Astronomical Society since 1984.

 

 

Cindy Preszler of WeatherSTL.com and Eric Gustavson of the Saint Louis Science Center will be featured at the August meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, August 18, at the James S. McDonnell Planetarium of the Saint Louis Science Center, 5100 Clayton Road in Forest Park, Saint Louis, MO 63110.  Free parking is available at the Planetarium site in Forest Park.     

 

"The Great American Eclipse" is the first total solar eclipse visible in the contiguous United States since 1979, and the first to cross the USA since 1918.  The path of the total solar eclipse, which is only about 70 miles wide, passes through parts of the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area. Those not within this path, whi ch includes all of North America, will see a partial solar eclipse.

 

Cindy Preszler will talk about weather prospects for August 21 and the effects of the solar eclipse on the weather. Eric Gustavson will explain why eclipses happen, why total solar eclipses are so rarely seen from any specific location, and how to view the partial phases of a solar eclipse safely. He will use the Zeiss star projector to simulate the August 21 eclipse on the Planetarium's dome.

 

Cindy Preszler provides weather forecasts for the Greater St. Louis area and weather content for independent radio, television, and web organizations via her web service, www.weatherSTL.com . From 1998 to 2016, she was the chief meteorologist for KSDK-TV in St. Louis. Eric Gustavson is a planetarium staff member of the Saint Louis Science Center. He presents planetarium programs and assists with their development.

 

  
SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, September 15, 2017 7:30pm
McDonnell Hall, Washington University

 

Local amateur astronomers will be featured at the September meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, September 15, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way.  Yellow zone and garage parking are available. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

The Great American Eclipse of August 21 was seen by millions across the country and hundreds of thousands across the Greater St. Louis area. Members of the St. Louis Astronomical Society will discuss the event and present images taken from various sites along the eclipse path. New and used solar eclipse glasses will be sent to schools in South America and Asia for student viewing of 2019 eclipses. These eclipses will not be visible from the U.S. The public is invited to donate ISO-approved glasses in good condition. Collection points – the McDonnell Planetarium in Forest Park and branches of many area libraries – will be mentioned. A complete list can be found at www.stleclipse.org .

 

Recently, LIGO detected a collsion between two neutron stars, a very different gravitational experience than two black holes colliding as detected earlier.  The event was studied and papers were published by 35% of the astronomical community! Dr. Krawczynski will explain the significance of the collision and what it means to our knowledge of astronomy.

 

 

 

Dr. William B. McKinnon will be featured at the November meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, November 17, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130.

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, it provided the first detailed look at the distant ice world. Scientists had hoped for more than images of a cratered surface, but did not know what to expect. They were astounded at views of strange surface features – mountains of supercold ice, glaciers of frozen nitrogen, landscapes of natural gas ice. Following the frenetic activity of the days of closest approach and recession, the New Horizons spacecraft was placed into hibernation as it coasted outward. It is now heading for an even more distant and much smaller object. Dr. McKinnon will talk about the discoveries already made from the images and data of the Pluto fly-by and comment about its next target, the icy 2014 MU69.

Dr. McKinnon is a Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University. His research focuses on the ice worlds, including Pluto, that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune; icy satellites of the outer solar system; and the physics of impact cratering. Dr. McKinnon is a deputy scientist and coinvestigator for the Geology, Geophysics, and Imaging Team of the New Horizons mission.

 

 

 

Dr. Amy E. Kimball of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico,  will be featured at the December meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, December 15, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way.  Free yellow zone and garage parking are available. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

 

Radio quasars are very bright, very distant objects detected by the radio waves they emit. They are now known to be supermassive black holes – black holes containing thousands to millions of times the amount of matter packed into the Sun. A black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that nothing, including visible light and radio waves, can escape it. The black hole itself is not visible, but the gaseous material falling into it can glow as the falling particles collide. Dr. Kimball will talk about the nature of radio quasars and some of the questions about them that astronomers are trying to answer. She will also talk about her work with the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope observatory. The VLA is an interconnected group of 27 radio telescopes, each over 80 feet across.

Dr. Amy B. Kimball is an Assistant Scientist on the scientific staff at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She assists astronomers worldwide who use the VLA, as well as being on the team that is developing the VLA Sky Survey of radio sources. Her research interests center on the study of supermassive black holes in other galaxies.