MAY PROGRAM SCHEDULE 2024
All ASLI Meetings Begin at 8:00 PM
IN PERSON AND ON ZOOM
May 1 – The Night Skies of May by Steve Bandel
Steve Bandel will do a brief Night Sky Review of objects of interest to observe this month, and then Steve and Doug William will try something new. They will give advance notice to Club members that we will have a group discussion about possible astronomy topics and current articles which they will point to in advance. We are hoping that Dave Bush’s talk about the Artemis Program will be the primary area of interest and conversation. While Steve and Doug will facilitate the discussion, the intention is for everyone to participate.
IN PERSON ONLY
May 8 – ASLI Observing Night
Club observing, open to EVERYONE! Visitors Welcome! Bring your telescope or binoculars to our public observing session, or look through our telescopes which we set up for the evening. We can show you some of the wonderful objects in the night sky this time of year. We will ONLY have this observing session if there are perfectly clear skies, however. CHECK BACK HERE before driving out, to make sure the observing session has not been cancelled if in doubt about the weather. We meet in the parking lot at Vanderbilt.
IN PERSON AND ON ZOOM
May 15 – Horn Radio Telescopes by Abby Lynch
Small horn radio telescopes have emerged as a cost-effective and accessible tool for observing the 21-centimeter hydrogen line emission from our Milky Way galaxy. These compact yet powerful instruments offer an affordable and straightforward alternative to more complex and expensive radio telescope configurations. During this presentation, Abigail Lynch will explain the process of constructing a horn radio telescope, including a comprehensive guide to the materials required and the step-by-step process involved. In addition to the construction of the pyramidal horn radio telescope design, Abigail will explain the advantages and limitations of different horn antenna configurations, including price, accessibility of materials, construction, and effectiveness of observations from a personal perspective. Abigail is a current senior at Sachem North High School and intends to attend UCLA in the fall for astrophysics and computer science.
IN PERSON AND ON ZOOM
May 22 – Stellar Combustion – by Dr. Alan Calder
Thermonuclear type 1a supernovae are bright stellar explosions that occur when a massive white dwarf star undergoes a thermonuclear runaway. The explosion outcome is extremely sensitive to the nature of the burning and successfully modeling these events requires understanding thermonuclear combustion in detail. Prof. Alan Calder will give an update on research on thermonuclear supernovae. He will introduce these events and describe competing explosion scenarios. He will present recent observational results from the James Webb Space Telescope and describe how these results constrain proposed explosion settings. Prof. Calder joined the Stony Brook Physics and Astronomy department in 2007 after research appointments at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. His research is in numerically modeling astrophysical phenomena, and he has studied core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae, coalescing neutron stars, and classical novae.
IN PERSON AND ON ZOOM
June 5 – Talk on Observing, To Be Announced – This is the date for a talk on a topic involving observing and the speaker and subject will be announced at the end of May Please stay tuned.
