Program

Topic:  Fear and Loathing in the Heavens: The 1910 Return of Halley’s Comet Speaker: Richard J. Goodrich In 1705, Edmond Halley liberated humanity from the belief that comets were portents of doom; two centuries later, in 1910, as Halley’s Comet returned to perihelion, newspapers and magazines, religious leaders, misguided theorists, and shameless grifters managed to […]

Topic: AISIG and imaging programs within SDAA Speaker: David Wood and others on AISIG Past SDAA president and manager of SDAA’s TARO Observatory, David Wood, is reinvigorating the imaging group within SDAA. He and others will give an introduction to this field that is becoming more accessible to members given advances in cameras and software.

Topic: Signs in the Heavens: A Muslim Astronomer’s Perspective on Religion and Science Speaker: Dr. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad The talk is based on Dr. Ahmed’s book of the same name which reviews some of the scientific achievements of the golden era of Islamic civilization and some important achievements in astronomy. Islamic astronomy played a significant role

Topic: Stellar Evolution and the Origin of Elements Speaker: Tim Thompson In-person at the Mission Trails Regional Park visitor center and online with Zoom. Tim will walk us through the history and physics of stellar evolution, starting with the big deal that everything we know about stars is derived from the light we see. Tim

Title: Focus on Palomar Observatory Speakers: Steve Flanders, Kin Searcy, others Palomar Observatory will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the 200-inch Hale telescope on June 3, 2023. In commemoration, SDAA will focus on the history, construction, and science of the observatory and the iconic telescope that was the largest effective telescope in

Topic: Dark Matter – Observational Evidence and Experimental Searches Speaker: Dr. Eric Cotner Dr. Eric Cotner is a  data scientist and theoretical astroparticle physicist. Dr. Cotner graduated from UCLA in 2018 with a PhD in physics under the mentorship of Alexander Kusenko. The focus of his research was exotic dark matter candidates formed from scalar condensates

Topic: The Wacky World of Exoplanets and How We Discover Them Speaker: Dennis Conti Dennis Conti is a retired telecommunications professional and an amateur astronomer with a strong interest in exoplanet research. In 2015, he founded the AAVSO’s Exoplanet Section and has continued as section leader since. Dennis is also on the board of the

Topic: Astronomical Word Play Speaker: Dr. Richard Lederer Our speaker is the distinguished verbavore Dr. Richard Lederer, who is an American linguist, author, speaker, and teacher. He is best known for his books on the English language and on wordplay such as puns, oxymorons, and anagrams. He has been dubbed “the Wizard of Idiom,” “Attila

October topic: Amateur Spectroscopy and the AAVSO Speaker: Dr. Steven Shore Dr. Shore is the Chief of the Observational Spectroscopy Section of the AAVSO and a professor at the University of Pisa. Dr Shore will give an introduction to spectroscopy and discuss a science case where amateurs can make a contribute to the science. Professional astronomers using