Next NOVAC Public Meeting
Sunday, July 12, 2026

NOVAC member Alex Gorbachev will explain how you can image planets and deep-sky objects with a single rig and a unified setup. In this talk, he will take you through a multi-year journey that led to the development of two versatile imaging systems capable of operating both in the field and remotely, supporting high-resolution planetary imaging as well as deep-sky astrophotography.His goal is to encourage experimentation. He will share what worked, what did not, and the lessons learned along the way. This presentation offers practical ideas and proven solutions that may help you refine your own setup and push further in this challenging and rewarding hobby.

Dr. Jacob Turner presents:   Neutron Stars: Nature’s Most Versatile Laboratories Neutron stars are ultra-dense, rapidly spinning objects born in the violent deaths of more massive stars. Smaller on average than Manhattan, these stars have proven to be among the most multifaceted naturally occurring laboratories every found, with applications ranging from studying the structure of the […]

Dr. Elizabeth Turtle presents:   Dragonfly: Robotic Aerial Exploration of Prebiotic Chemistry and Habitability on Saturn’s moon Titan Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is an ocean world with a dense atmosphere, abundant complex organic material on its icy surface, and a liquid-water ocean in its interior.  The joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission revealed Titan to be surprisingly Earth-like, […]

Dr. Lara Waldrop presents:   Following in the Footsteps of George R. Carruthers One of the most significant gaps in our knowledge of Earth’s near-space environment concerns its outermost neutral atmosphere layer known as the exosphere.  This region plays a critical role in mediating Earth’s recovery from geomagnetic storms and is the pathway by which its constituent […]

Drawings of comets’ appearances date back at least two thousand years, making the study of comet ‘morphology’ among the oldest endeavors in all of astronomy. While many newer techniques have been invented to study comets, assessment of their morphology continues to hold scientific value today. Dr. Matthew Knight will discuss how he uses specialized ‘narrowband’ comet filters on modestly sized telescopes to infer properties of the nuclei of active comets.