Meeting Recordings & Event Videos

Meeting Recordings & Event VideosMark Firoozfar2021-05-27T13:52:10-04:00

Northern Virginia Astronomy Club

YouTube Video UC62qYZDyzE1yKXjBxR-lguw_bkHpOXIv6vY

Supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of stars, are among the most powerful events in the universe. They are a major component of the cycle of interstellar matter, and shape the internal structures of galaxies, seeding the cosmos with the elements necessary for life itself. In their aftermath, expanding clouds of gas and dust known as supernova remnants are visible for thousands of years. Despite no nearby supernovae in centuries, these remnants allow us to study the explosion mechanisms “up-close,” while simultaneously observing the reprocessing of the interstellar medium as the blast wave races outwards. I will give a general overview of some of the science of these remnants, showing many beautiful examples from telescopes such as Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and the VLA. I will also give a mission-level overview of an exciting mission in development: the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM. XRISM is a JAXA/NASA collaborative mission with ESA participation, and is targeted for launch in the spring of 2023.

Dr. Brian Williams is a Research Astrophysicist in the X-ray Astrophysics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He earned a B.S. in Physics from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in Physics from North Carolina State University. He came to Goddard as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in 2012. From 2017-2018, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD in mission support for both the Hubble and JWST missions. In 2018, he returned to NASA Goddard, where he currently works as Project Scientist for XRISM. From 2020-2022, he served as Chief Scientist for the Physics of the Cosmos Program Office at NASA. Dr. Williams was a 2020 recipient of the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal. He has approximately 70 refereed publications with approximately 2500 citations.

Historical Supernovae and the Future of XRay Astronomy, Feb 2023

YouTube Video UC62qYZDyzE1yKXjBxR-lguw_bkHpOXIv6vY

The first 2024 solar eclipse planning meeting of the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC). The briefing includes the path of the upcoming eclipse, long-term average weather conditions along the path, estimated driving time to key points from Northern Virginia, and more information to aid in travel planning.

2024 Solar Eclipse Planning Mtg 1 on 2023 01 19

YouTube Video UC62qYZDyzE1yKXjBxR-lguw_lMLwJrPvS4E

After a look-back at the August 2017 total solar eclipse, the talk will survey upcoming total solar eclipses visible across North America through the end of the century. Special attention will be given to the October 2023 annular eclipse and April 2024 total eclipse.

A lifelong amateur astronomer, Phil Harrington was bitten by the “astronomical bug” when he was assigned to watch the total lunar eclipse of April 1968 as a homework assignment. Since then, Phil has spent countless hours touring the universe through telescopes and binoculars. He is a former staff member of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and instructor at the Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport, New York. Phil is an adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College, Selden, New York, where he teaches courses in stellar and planetary astronomy. He is a founding member of the Westport (CT) Astronomical Society and is also one of the coordinators of the annual Astronomer’s Conjunction, held every summer in Northfield, MA. Phil is also a contributing editor for Astronomy magazine, where he has published more than 200 articles since 1988. In addition, Phil authors a monthly “Cosmic Challenge” feature on Cloudynights.com. Beyond these, he has written for Deep Sky and Sky & Telescope magazines, as well as other periodicals. Phil has undergraduate degrees in science education from Wagner College and mechanical engineering from New York Institute of Technology, as well as a Master’s degree in environmental engineering from New York Institute of Technology.

The Next Great American Eclipse(s)

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In this talk Jocelyn will describe the discovery of pulsars (pulsating radio stars) from the point of view of the student involved in the discovery. I will also reflect on the treatment of young women scientists in the 1960s.

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsar in 1967.

Jocelyn Burnell has worked in many roles and in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland. She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female President of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.

She has received many honors, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.

The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.

The Discovery of Pulsars: A Graduate Student's Tale, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

YouTube Video UC62qYZDyzE1yKXjBxR-lguw_dk5_BwT4amk

$Only via the art and craft of telescope making are you able to make an object that is accurate to within a small fraction of the wavelength of light, with just your bare hands and some simple, hand-made measuring devices, without an enormous budget, and have it work extremely well. Even though much of the science of optics is well beyond the ken of most people, the math needed for making a Newtonian is mostly what one learns in high school algebra and trig. This talk will reflect on the history of telescope making in the DC area beginning in the late 1930s through present times. I’ll describe my involvement with the Chevy Chase Community Center in DC, one of the few remaining centers in the country that hold amateur telescope making classes. Best of all the instructional classes are still free, and probably worth at least twice as much as that! The workshop at Chevy Chase has excellent facilities for anybody who wants to either build a telescope from scratch, or test their existing optics, or modify or fix what they already have. Our facilities include metal and wood lathes, a powerful Chinese mill-drill, and a SawStop table saw, and both metal and wood band saws. We also have a wide variety of hand and power tools; lots of donated paint; assorted metal parts like nuts, bolts, springs, and washers; a variety of measurement devices; and an optical testing tunnel with a variety of testing rigs. In addition to raw mirror blanks from 3 inches up to 18 inches, we also have abrasives, pitch, and grinding tools – and a few completed mirrors that need to be put into telescopes. Join us and learn about telescope making, how far we’ve progressed since the 1930s, and what the future might hold for this art and crafts form of amateur astronomy. Biography: Guy Brandenburg has been volunteering to lead the telescope making classes sponsored by the National Capital Astronomers for about 20 years. A DC native, and a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Maryland, he taught secondary math at various levels to DC public school students for over 30 years, before retiring in 2009. Among other things, he coached highly successful middle-school-level MathCounts teams at two different DC junior high / middle schools, and for about a decade was also the lead teacher in a hands-on Saturday science academy for middle schoolers run by the Carnegie Institution for Science at their P Street headquarters. He is currently the president of perhaps the second-largest DC area astronomy club, National Capital Astronomers, and is a long-time NOVAC member. He is also the current president of the Hopewell Astronomical Society, which built, owns, and operates a small private observatory of the same name atop Bull Run Mountain, near Haymarket VA. He recalls his parents showing him Sputnik’s booster in the dark night skies of the family farm just outside Clarksburg MD back in 1957, and watching amazing auroral displays in northern Vermont from the farm he was renting in 1972. He also took an astronomy class in junior high school and in college. But he never owned a telescope until he built one, including the optics, under the guidance of the late Jerry Schnall at the same workshop where he now volunteers. For his first scope, he used a design in Richard Berry’s book on making your own scope, which he got from a science-oriented book-of-the-month club. He has lost count of the number of telescopes he has built or helped others to build since then, and he has modified that 6” f/8 scope twice in order to take it by airplane to view eclipses in Chile (1994) and Wyoming (2017).$

Eight Decades of Amateur Telescope Making in the DC Area

YouTube Video UC62qYZDyzE1yKXjBxR-lguw_RVvqkN9nBfE