San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) sponsors speakers on a wide range of astronomy topics on the third Wednesday of every month at the Mission Trails Regional Park Visitors Center. The Program meeting begins at 7:00 PM. Each attendee receives one free door prize ticket. After announcements and a small amount of business, the audience is treated to the featured presentation. At the close of the meeting the door prizes are presented. The event is open to the public. The Mission Trails Regional Park Visitors Center is at One Fr. Junipero Serra Trail, San Diego CA 92119. Call the park at 619-668-3281 for more information or visit http://www.mtrp.org.
Program meetings may also be held via Zoom, or as hybrid in-person/Zoom meetings. You can register in advance for the next Zoom meeting at the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMude-sqz4sGN1qXv7qSlBwnYpgaQEZZ8LU
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please contact Dave Wood if you have an questions, comments, or ideas for the Program Meetings.
Meetings since July 2020 are being archived on the SDAA YouTube page.
October 18, 2023 Program Meeting
Speaker: Neil Farber Topic: Lunar Exploration: What We Did, What We Saw, What We Learned Many people are not aware of the extensive investigation, both manned and unmanned, that NASA conducted of our nearest neighbor, the Moon. This talk will explore the unmanned landers and orbiters of the 1950s and 1960s, the six manned landings of the Apollo program, and the orbiters of more recent years. We will…
September 20, 2023 Program Meeting
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 rekindle that fear. When astronomers announced that the earth would pass through the…
August 16, 2023 Program Meeting
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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldoRCqIjuLQ
July 19, 2023 Program Meeting
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 in the revival of European astronomy following the early medieval period. The book…
June 21, 2023 Program Meeting
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 Thompson holds an MS degree in Physics and enjoyed a career at JPL…
May 17, 2023 Program Meeting
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 the world from its dedication until Keck in 1993. Although no longer the…
April 19, 2023 Program Meeting
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 in the early universe, which includes Q-balls, boson stars, and primordial black holes. It…
March 15, 2023 Program Meeting
HIRAX: A New Way to Study Hot Jupiters and Other Exoplanets. Dr. Ashley Baker: Instrument Scientist and Research Associate in Astronomy with the Exoplanet Technology Laboratory at Caltech Optical Observatories. High-resolution Imager for Rapid Assessment of eXo-atmospheres (HIRAX) is a multi band instrument for rapid assessment of the spectrum of exoplanet atmospheres. This is a new high resolution instrument being developed for the Palomar 200-inch telescope that uses multiple…
February 15, 2023 Program Meeting
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 AAVSO. Exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) we now know come in all…