Past Meetings - 2025
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for Jan 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
7:30 pm Friday, January 17, 2025
"Finding New Physics in Debris from Colliding Neutron Stars"
by Bhupal Dev, PhD.; Washington University
The collision of two neutron stars around 130 million light-years from Earth, and the unique physics this merger created, may have shed new light on dark matter. New research conducted by Washington University physicist Bhupal Dev suggests the neutron star merger, detected here on Earth as the gravitational wave signal GW170817, could help place constraints on hypothetical particles called "axions," one of the leading candidates for dark matter. Axions have never been directly detected, but they appear in many models that extend physics beyond the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, which is our current best description of subatomic particles and how they interact with each other.P
Professor Dev's main research goal is to establish a clear and coherent picture of the new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Focusing on both theoretical and phenomenological aspects that might also shed light on other theoretical or aesthetic limitations of the standard model, such as the radiative stability of the Higgs boson, gauge coupling unification, and flavor puzzle. He is also interested in exploring new interdisciplinary avenues for new physics searches, such as those involving multi-messenger astrophysics and nuclear physics.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for Feb 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
7:30 pm Friday, February 21, 2025
"Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the next big thing in radio astronomy"
by K. Michael Malolepszy; SLAS
This year construction has started on the next big thing in radio astronomy - the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). When completed, SKA will be the biggest telescope of any type constructed and may remain so for the foreseeable future. Why it is being built, what is hoped it will see and a peak at some of its early observations will be discussed.
Michael Malolepszy has worked as a Radio Telescope Operator at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array in New Mexico and has also worked for the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Washington University and at the St. Louis Science Center where he presents live planetarium programs at the McDonnell Planetarium. He has owned and used over 14 telescopes of various types and sizes and occasionally teaches observational astronomy workshops
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for March 2025 Meeting
NOTE: This meeting will be in Wilson Hall, Room 214., Washington University - St. Louis
7:30 pm Friday, March 21, 2025
“The Cosmic Mystery and History of Fast Radio Bursts”
By Duncan Lorimar, PhD, FRS, West Virginia University
A "Fast Radio Burst" (FRB) is a brief, intense burst of radio waves originating from deep space, considered a cosmic mystery due to their unknown origin, with current theories suggesting they likely come from extremely dense objects like neutron stars or magnetars, possibly caused by violent events within their turbulent magnetic fields; while the exact mechanism is still debated, recent observations have allowed scientists to pinpoint some FRBs to specific galaxies, providing crucial clues to their source
Astronomers use radio telescopes – instruments that collect and focus radio waves instead of light – to study the universe. Nearly every type of astronomical object naturally emits radio waves which are largely unaffected by earth's atmosphere and interstellar dust and gas. “Fast radio bursts” (FRB) are millisecond-duration radio wave pulses of cosmological origin that were discovered at West Virginia University in 2007. Dr. Lorimer comments, “They show amazing promise as probes of the large-scale structure of the Universe. They provide a new window into the population of compact objects at vast distances. Although much of the details as to their origins remain to be discovered, I will give an account of their discovery and what we have learned in the past eighteen years.”
Dr. Duncan Lorimer currently holds the rank of Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University He has been a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1994 and in 2018 was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition of his contributions to our understanding of pulsars, and for the discovery of fast radio bursts. In 2023, he was the co-recipient of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy along with Maura McLaughlin and Matthew Bailes for the discovery of fast radio bursts. Dr. Lorimer was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2024.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for April 2025 Meeting
" Beyond Particles: The Elegant Universe of Strings”
By Megan Dickson; SLAS
Megan will discuss String Theory, a theoretical framework that replaces the point-like particles of particle physics with one-dimensional objects called strings. String Theory aims to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity, offering a unified description of all fundamental forces and particles. This theory is significant as it provides potential insights into the nature of the universe, including the possibility of multiple dimensions and the unification of all forces.
Megan Dickson is a dedicated student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, majoring in Astrophysics. In addition to her academic pursuits, she works as a lab technician at Washington University in St. Louis, under the guidance of Dr. Henric Krawczynski, the department chair of Physics and Astronomy. Her responsibilities include data analysis, lab work, and occasionally presenting astrophysics topics to her group for the journal club.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch the meeting here: May 2025 - SLAS Panel Discussion - The Digital Era of Astronomy
Watch Introductory Slideshow for May 2025 Meeting
UPDATE: NOTE: Due to the tornado that hit Wash U and AREA Forest Park tonight, there will be NO IN PERSON MEETING TONIGHT
You can still join via Zoom, Send email to
7:30 pm Friday, May 16, 2025
"The Digital Era of Astronomy"
A Panel Discussion by SLAS Members
For 400 years, amateur astronomers have studied objects in the night sky using telescopes and their eyes alone. To observe dim objects like galaxies and nebula, amateurs had to use large telescopes at remote and dark locations, away from city light-pollution. Objects visible only in winter months, meant braving cold temperatures. Amateurs could photograph faint objects to reveal details not visible to the eye, but this required expensive telescopes and cameras. Afterwards, hours were spent using special software to enhance the images. Imaging of this sort required years of practice to develop special skills. In recent years, new digital telescopes have come on the market. This new type of telescope replaces the human eye with a camera chip and sophisticated image processing software. Software embedded in the telescope could perform advanced processing without the need for a highly skilled user. Entry-level digital telescopes cost less than $400 and can automatically capture and enhance almost any celestial object. Now anyone can observe the Sun, Moon, planets, galaxies, nebula, etc on a computer or tablet from the comfort of their armchair.
We will invited a panel of SLAS members, who have used these types of telescopes, to share their experiences. We will discuss the types of telescopes currently available. We will discuss their strengths and weaknesses based on actual experience.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch the meeting here: June 2025 - Mike Nowak - The Variable High Energy Sky
Watch Introductory Slideshow for June 2025 Meeting
7:30 pm Friday, June 20, 2025
"The Variable High Energy Sky"
by Mike Nowak, PhD. Washington University
White dwarfs and neutron stars are only the size of the earth or cities, respectively. Even the most massive black holes in the Universe, with the mass of a Dwarf Galaxy, have event horizons that are no bigger than the distance to the outer planets in our solar system. This means that with very rare exception, we cannot image these systems. This is especially true when we study these systems in X-rays, which are difficult to focus. But what we can do instead is perform very precise measurements of variability, on time scales as short as milliseconds or even shorter, and that lets us infer properties of these systems on size scales that we otherwise cannot resolve. And luckily these highly energetic systems are also highly dynamic. Much of my work revolves around studying the variabilty in these systems. I will present a number of examples from my past several decades of research, discussing what these observations imply for these systems.
Michael Nowak is a Research Professor in the Dept. of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is the Associate Director at the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. He researches high energy phenomena related to the physics of black holes -- stellar mass black holes in our own galaxy, as well as supermassive black holes in the centers of our own and other galaxies -- and neutron stars.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for July 2025 Meeting
This meeting will start at 6:30pm CDT instead of the usual 7:30pm
Friday, July 18, 2025
“The Search for Interstellar Objects of Technological Origin”
By Abraham (Avi) Loeb, PhD, Harvard University
Over the past decade, the first four interstellar objects were discovered. They include the interstellar meteor, IM1, detected on January 8, 2014, `Oumuamua detected on October 19, 2017, and Borisov detected on August 29, 2019. Among these, the first two appeared anomalous relative to known solar-system rocks whereas the fourth appeared to be a familiar comet. IM1 exhibited the highest material strength among all meteorites in the CNEOS catalog of NASA, `Oumuamua exhibited a flat shape and non-gravitational acceleration with no detectable cometary evaporation. In June 2023 we recovered 850 spherules from the Pacific Ocean site IM1. A tenth of these submillimeter meteoritic spherules displayed a unique chemical composition, different from familiar solar system materials. Currently, new Galileo Project Observatories are monitoring millions of objects near Earth in the infrared, optical, radio and audio and analyzing their nature with machine-learning software. Are any of them Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena? Forthcoming data from the Rubin Observatory in Chile will offer additional clues on interstellar objects. Is space trash from extraterrestrial technological civilizations lurking among the natural interstellar rocks?
Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author. Loeb has written 8 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial (HarperCollins, 2022) and Interstellar (HarperCollins, 2023). Loeb is the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics , and also serves as the Head of the Galileo Project (2021-present). Loeb is a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House, a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies (2018-2021). In 2024, Loeb was ranked number 3 in publication record and impact of research among all astronomers worldwide over the past 5 years by ScholarGPS. Loeb's latest TED talk was among the top five most popular TED talks in 2024.
The meeting will begin at 6:30 PM Friday, July 18 in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Danforth campus of Washington University, 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, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge. The event will also be available via Zoom online conference.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for August 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
Friday, August 15, 2025
““A Journey to the Ring Giant: The Legacy of Cassini Huygens”
By Megan Dickson, St. Louis Astronomical Society
Megan Dickson is a dedicated student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, majoring in Astrophysics. In addition to her academic pursuits, she works as a lab technician at Washington University in St. Louis, under the guidance of Dr. Henric Krawczynski, the department chair of Physics and Astronomy. Her responsibilities include data analysis, lab work, and occasionally presenting astrophysics topics to her group for the journal club.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for September 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
Friday, September 19, 2025
“The Roman Space Telescope: "The Roman View of Strong Lenses”
By Tansu Daylan, PhD, Washington University
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (hereafter, Roman), scheduled for launch in late 2026, will play a transformative role in strong lensing science with its planned wide-field surveys. With its remarkable 0.281 square degree field of view and diffraction-limited angular resolution, Roman is uniquely suited to characterizing dark matter substructure from a robust population of strong lenses. Dr. Daylan will present a simulation of detectable strong lenses in Roman's planned High Latitude Wide Area Survey (HLWAS) and of a population of galaxy-galaxy strong lenses across cosmic time with Cold Dark Matter subhalo populations. For a fiducial case of single 146-second exposures, around 160,000 strong lenses should be detectable, and about 500 should have sufficient signal-to-noise to be amenable to detailed substructure characterization.
Dr Tansu Daylan joined the Washington University Physics Department faculty as an assistant professor in Fall 2023. Previously, he was an LSST Discovery Alliance postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University between 2022 and 2023. Earlier, he was a TESS postdoctoral associate (2021-2022) and a Kavli postdoctoral fellow (2018-2021) at MIT. He completed his PhD at Harvard University (2013-2018) and did a double major in electrical and electronics engineering (2008-2012) and physics (2008-2013) at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch the meeting here: Oct 2025 - Paul Byrne - Why is Venus not Earth's twin?
Watch Introductory Slideshow for October 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
Friday, October 17, 2025
“"Venus"
by Paul Byrne, PhD., Washington University”
Since NASA’s Magellan mission in the 1990s, scientists have had major questions about Venus’ geology, including its volcanic characteristics. With the recent discovery of active volcanism on Venus, understanding just where volcanoes are concentrated on the planet, how many there are, how big they are, etc., becomes all the more important. Byrne and others used radar imagery from NASA’s Magellan mission to Venus to catalog more than 85,000 volcanoes across Venus, about 99% of which are less than 3 miles (5 km) in diameter.
Dr. Byrne received his BA in geology, and PhD in planetary geology, from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He was a MESSENGER postdoctoral fellow at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, and an LPI postdoctoral fellow at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. Prior to joining Washington University, he was an assistant and then associate professor at North Carolina State University.
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch Introductory Slideshow for November 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
Friday, November 21, 2025
"The Making of an Enterprise: How Star Trek Helped NASA Dream Big and How NASA Helped Star Trek Survive”; by Glen Swanson
Discover how NASA, the Smithsonian, and the aerospace community helped craft, legitimize, and popularize the beloved television show Star Trek.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry sought to create a work of science fiction that would immerse viewers not only through clever storylines and modern visual effects, but also by presenting the story in a scientific and technological context that felt believable. To this end, Roddenberry, a former WWII combat pilot, used his connections in the aerospace industry to seek out the latest and greatest technology.
Glen E. Swanson holds a B.S. in History from Western Michigan University and an M.S. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota. From 1998 to 2002, he served as Chief Historian of NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he edited the anthology "Before This Decade Is Out..." Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program (1999), winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize. He also co-authored Fifty-five Trips Around the Sun: The History of Smiths Industries Information Management Systems in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1999). Swanson founded Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, now in its thirty-second year and recipient of the American Astronomical Society's Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History (2015).
SLAS Regular Meeting
Watch the meeting here: Dec 2025 - Deana Weibel - The Ultraview Effect
Watch Introductory Slideshow for December 2025 Meeting
McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis
Friday, December 19, 2025
“The Ultraview Effect”, by Deana Weibel, PhD.
Deana Weibel, PhD. Is a Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Academic anthropologist with over 25 years of experience in ethnographic research and university teaching. Expertise in the anthropology of religion and religious studies conducting innovative research into the religious aspects of space exploration, including the research into the phenomenon known as the "ultraview effect.“ The ultraview effect expands on the classic "overview effect." Comparing spacefarers to religious pilgrims, Weibel suggests that this experience of deep humility is a generative reaction to awe, which inspires exploration and adventure.
Deana Weibel, PhD (UC San Diego, 2001) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses primarily on religion, especially the topics of pilgrimage, sacred space, the mutual influence of scientific and religious ideas on each other, and religion and space exploration. Her early fieldwork took place in France at pilgrimage sites (sometimes understood by pilgrims as “energy” sites) like Rocamadour and Montségur. She has also conducted research at the pilgrimage center of Chimayó, New Mexico. More recent work focuses on religion as a motivation for and influence on space travel and outer space-based sciences, with field visits taking place at "space sites" throughout the U.S., including the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers, the Mojave Air and Spaceport, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the JHU Applied Physics Lab, and Spaceport America. Weibel spent a month in 2019 at the Vatican Observatory, studying "the Pope's Astronomers." She has also studied the history of anthropology, particularly the overlap of her own family’s role and the role of anthropology in the exhibition of Philippine Igorot people in fairs and expositions during the early 1900s. She is the co-founder and co-organizer of Roger That! A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B. Chaffee, a two-day conference that has been an annual Grand Rapids, Michigan event since 2017. She served as chair for GVSU's Anthropology Department from 2012-2018 and as interim chair for GVSU's Interdisciplinary, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department from 2021-2022.
75+ years serving St. Louis
The St. Louis Astronomical Society (SLAS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit established in 1936. SLAS is devoted to the interest and advancement of the science of astronomy. With over 200 members, SLAS is the largest astronomical society in the metro St. Louis area.