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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251107T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251107T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20251104T111254Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251104T111711Z
UID:10001730-1762543800-1762551000@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting – November 2025
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nThis meeting’s speaker will present inperson from the Chapman campus.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFrom OCA School Star Parties\n  \nto 4K Cameras in Orbit\n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn this presentation\, Liam Kennedy\, amateur astronomer\, former president of the Orange County Astronomers\, and now SpaceTV Director at Sen\, shares his remarkable journey from local astronomy outreach to developing technology that now operates aboard the International Space Station. \nDuring his years supporting OCA’s public school programs in the 2000s\, Liam discovered how few people realized that astronauts were living and working overhead. That awareness gap sparked the idea that would later become ISS-Above — a small device that alerts users whenever the Space Station passes overhead and\, eventually\, displayed live video of Earth from orbit. \nWhat began as a personal project to inspire his grandchildren soon attracted global attention\, support from The Planetary Society and NASA\, and partnerships that placed ISS-Above units in classrooms across the U.S. When NASA’s original HDEV Earth-viewing cameras were retired\, Liam refused to let the public lose that connection to space. His persistence led him to collaborate with Sen\, a company dedicated to sharing real-time 4K views of Earth from orbit. \nThrough his initiative\, Sen’s SpaceTV-1 camera system became part of the ISS via Airbus’s Bartolomeo platform — fulfilling a vision that began two decades earlier with OCA telescope nights under the stars. \nThis talk brings that full-circle story to life — showing how one amateur astronomer’s outreach mission grew into a global window on our planet from space. \n \nLiam Kennedy joined Sen in July 2023 as Space TV Director. For over a decade\, he has championed live Earth views from the International Space Station (ISS) through his invention of ISS-Above\, a Raspberry Pi-based device delivering real-time ISS tracking and video feeds. Since its 2013 Kickstarter launch\, ISS-Above has expanded to more than 5\,000 installations worldwide\, inspiring students\, educators\, and the public. \nIn 2019\, NASA contacts connected Liam with Sen CEO Charles Black to explore building a commercial UHD camera payload for the ISS. That partnership led to SpaceTV-1\, a three-camera system launched in March 2024 and now operating on the Columbus module’s Bartolomeo platform. \nLiam’s background blends media production\, live streaming\, and product innovation\, with a focus on astronomy\, science\, and space outreach. He is a frequent presenter and thought leader in the commercial space sector\, featured on technology and space podcasts\, and a regular speaker at the ISS R&D Conference\, where he has presented five times since 2015. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-2025-11/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251212T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251212T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20251104T110047Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251109T193110Z
UID:10001706-1765567800-1765575000@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting – December 2025
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nThis meeting’s speaker will present live from Edinburgh\, Scotland\, UK.\n  \nSettling Space with Microbes\n  \n \n  \nMicrobes from extreme environments help us search for life on other planets like Mars\, but they can also be used to advance the human exploration and settlement of space by producing useful products including mining metals. \n  \n \nCharles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. His scientific interests encompass microbial life in extreme environments\, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments and the exploration and settlement of space. He established the UK Centre for Astrobiology at Edinburgh in 2011\, a national node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute\, which has led many scientific and educational projects. He has published many papers\, academic and popular books including the Wiley-Blackwell textbook\, ‘Astrobiology’\, in its third edition. Recently\, he organised and led the Life Beyond project with the Scottish Prison Service\, which engaged prisoners in the design of human settlements in space\, drawing on their experience of confinement. He has previously worked at NASA Ames Research Centre\, the British Antarctic Survey\, and The Open University. He received his first degree in biochemistry from Bristol University and his DPhil in molecular biophysics at the University of Oxford. \nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-2025-12/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260109T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260109T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20251215T120533Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251217T152406Z
UID:10001736-1767987000-1767994200@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting – January 2026
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nThis meeting’s speaker will present live from Kutchan\, Japan.\n  \nUntangling the Rate of\n  \nBlack Hole Mergers:\n  \nA Cosmic Tug of War\n  \n \nOn September 14th\, 2015\, humanity detected a ripple in spacetime 10\,000 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom coming from over one billion light-years away. This awesome feat of physics\, astronomy\, and engineering confirmed Einstein’s prediction of gravitational waves made over one hundred years earlier\, and opened the door to a whole new means of studying the Universe. Adam is one of many so-called “gravitational wave paleontologists” seeking to use gravitational waves to unravel the formation\, lives\, and deaths of stars and black holes that merge\, emitting the tiny waves that we now detect daily. Adam will be discussing how he used simulations of millions of massive stars to provide insight into the rates and demographics of mergers throughout the history of the Universe. \nLink to paper \n \nAdam Boesky is a rising PhD candidate at Harvard University studying a broad array of topics relating to astrophysical transients. As an undergraduate at Harvard\, he focused on mergers of compact objects (black holes and neutron stars)\, and developed machine learning pipelines for classifying events detected from large-scale astrophysical surveys. Recently\, Adam has been focusing on the detection and analysis of the exotic\, elusive transients that occur on the timescales of several years. \nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-2026-01/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260213T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260213T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20251215T162726Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260130T223321Z
UID:10001737-1771011000-1771018200@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting – February 2026
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nFree and open to the public but per our host’s policy\, minors (under 18) are welcome to attend as long as they are accompanied by their parent or guardian at all times.\nThis meeting’s speaker will present inperson from the campus of the Chapman University.\n  \nPlanetary Habitability in the\n  \nSolar System and Beyond\n  \n \n  \nUnderstanding planetary habitability is one of the major challenges of the current scientific era. Though traditionally viewed through the lens of our home planet and its evolutionary history\, data from other Solar System objects\, and a plethora of planets outside of our Solar System\, are shedding new light on habitability research. This presentation will discuss the factors that contribute to planetary habitability\, and how these pieces fit together in an inter-disciplinary pathway that will benefit both the understanding of the evolution of Earth’s habitability and identifying possible abodes of life elsewhere throughout the universe. \n \nStephen Kane is a Professor of Planetary Astrophysics at the University of California\, Riverside. His work covers a broad range of topics and he has discovered hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. He is a leading expert on the topic of planetary habitability\, the habitable zone of planetary systems\, and the study of why Venus and Earth underwent divergent evolutions. He has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers as well as several books on the topic of exoplanets and habitability.  He is also a prominent scientific leader for several NASA missions designed to search for life in the universe. \nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-2026-02/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260313T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260313T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20260209T195735Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260211T123804Z
UID:10001751-1773430200-1773437400@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting – March 2026
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nFree and open to the public but per our host’s policy\, minors (under 18) are welcome to attend as long as they are accompanied by their parent or guardian at all times.\nThis meeting’s speaker will present inperson from the campus of the Chapman University.\n  \nThe Milky Way’s Central Black Hole:\n  \nLessons on accretion physics\n  \n \n  \nEvery large galaxy hosts a black hole at its center. These black holes’ feedback on their host galaxies shapes the evolution of galaxies and\, ultimately\, affects the Universe as a whole.  The Milky Way’s own supermassive black hole\, Sagittarius A*\, is the closest such object and the only one that can be studied in unprecedented detail – down to individual orbiting stars\, small infalling clouds\, and even its event horizon. Yet\, despite its proximity and decades of observations\, its behavior remains among the most challenging to explain. This talk explores Sagittarius A*\, its immediate surrounding\, and the challenges of describing black hole accretion physics. Particular emphasis is placed on the recent discovery of a wind associated with Sagittarius A*. The talk will also address what our own black hole can teach us about supermassive black holes across the Universe. \n \nElena (Lena) Murchikova is an astrophysicist interested in black holes. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University. Originally from Moscow\, Lena holds two PhDs: one in astrophysics from Caltech and another in particle physics from Moscow State University. She completed her postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Harvard University’s Black Hole Initiative. Outside of research\, Lena enjoys mountaineering and (drone) photography. \nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-2026-03/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260410T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260410T213000
DTSTAMP:20260418T060400
CREATED:20260404T193452Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260404T193452Z
UID:10001756-1775849400-1775856600@www.ocastronomers.org
SUMMARY:General Meeting - April 2026
DESCRIPTION: Join Zoom\n\nFree and open to the public but per our host’s policy\, minors (under 18) are welcome to attend as long as they are accompanied by their parent or guardian at all times.\nThis meeting’s speaker will present online.\n  \nSupernovae\, Dark Energy\, and the\n  \nMystery of the Accelerating Universe\n  \n  \n \nType Ia supernovae are brilliant explosions of white dwarf stars and are some of the most powerful tools for measuring the universe. By comparing how bright these supernovae appear to how bright they really are\, astronomers can measure distances across billions of light-years. In the late 1990s\, these measurements led to one of the most surprising discoveries in the history of science: the expansion of the universe is speeding up\, driven by a mysterious phenomenon that was named dark energy. \nIn this talk\, we will explore how supernova discoveries (including contributions from dedicated amateur astronomers) feed into modern cosmological measurements. Along the way\, we’ll see how today’s observations are deepening the mystery of dark energy rather than closing the case. The accelerating universe remains one of the biggest puzzles in physics and supernovae are still lighting the way toward the answer. \n\nDavid Rubin is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His research focuses on using exploding stars called Type Ia supernovae to measure the expansion history of the universe and understand the nature of dark energy. He works on survey design\, calibration\, and statistical methods for current and next-generation observatories\, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. \nDr. Rubin received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California\, Berkeley working with Saul Perlmutter. He is still a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project and has authored or co-authored numerous publications on supernova cosmology and the accelerating universe. \nViews: 4
URL:https://www.ocastronomers.org/calendar/general-meeting-april-2026/
LOCATION:Irvine Lecture Hall of the Chapman University\, 336 N Center St\, Orange\, CA\, 92866\, United States
CATEGORIES:General Meetings
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