Orange County Astronomers

Full Moon
2020-11-30 | CA
Views: 4

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
2020-11-29 23:30 - 2020-11-30 03:50 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA

Ventura County Astronomical Society's Online General Meeting
2020-11-20 20:30 - 22:00 | Online
This is an online event held by OCA for VCAS.
No prior registration is required but when entering the webinar, zoom will ask for your name and email.
At the time of the meeting, to attend via zoom app click here, via your browser click here.
To install the zoom app click here.

Molly Shelton is a Power Systems Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. She is an early career hire, graduating from college with a BS in Physics in 2016 and joining the Power and Sensor Systems group to design, build and test hardware for missions all throughout the solar system. She has worked on a handful of projects in her 4 years at JPL including Dawn, SHERLOC, and Europa Clipper. She started her path to JPL in a high school robotics club and is honored to be able to share her story thus far with those who yearn for the stars in the same way.

Views: 4

Virtual Outreach Event Beatty Middle School in Buena Park @6pm
2020-11-17 18:00 - 19:00 | Gordon H. Beatty Middle School
Buana Park School District is combining all middle schools to have an astronomy night on Nov. 17th, 2020.
Views: 4

OCA Board Meeting
2020-11-15 10:30 - 13:00 | CA
The OCA board meeting is open to all current members of the club. The meeting will be held via zoom starting at 10:30am, Nov. 15,2020. To attend contact Alan Smallbone for meeting link and please include any items to be put on the agenda.
Views: 4

Open Spiral Bar
2020-11-14 22:00 - 23:30, 2020-10-10 22:00 - 23:30, 2020-09-12 22:00 - 23:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please register using the zoom.us link on the box above.
Come and socialize with your fellow astronomy enthusiasts face-to-face virtually!
Bring your latest astrophotos, mini-presentation, questions or none and your own refreshments.

Views: 4

Online General Meeting - November 2020
2020-11-13 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is an online event, to attend please register with zoom using the link on the box above.
NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto and Beyond

Since its launch in 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft has been speeding out of the solar system, transforming our understanding of planetary science along the way. In 2015, it provided the first close-up views of the Pluto system and revealed an astonishingly active world, replete with active glaciers, dynamic atmosphere, and possible signs of cryovolcanism. Four years (and about five astronomical units) later, New Horizons went on to perform the first flyby of a small Kuiper Belt Object: (486958) Arrokoth (formerly 2014 MU69). This 30-km wide, icy world is a relic of planet formation, with its own odd geology and formation story. In this talk, I’ll recap New Horizons amazing journey—and my parallel journey here on Earth, going from a graduate student, competing against the New Horizons team, to a researcher embedded within the team and shaping its future. I’ll close with some perspective about future exploration of the outer solar system.
James Tuttle Keane

Dr. James Tuttle Keane hails from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He received a bachelor’s degrees in Astronomy and Geology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a doctorate in planetary science from the University of Arizona. After a postdoctoral position at the California Institute of Technology, he started at JPL in 2020. Dr. Keane is a planetary scientist, studying the interactions between orbital dynamics, rotational dynamics, and geologic processes on rocky and icy worlds across the solar system. He uses a combination of theoretical methods, coupled with the analysis of spacecraft-derived datasets to investigate the dynamics, structure, origin, and evolution of solar system bodies. He has extensive experience with NASA missions, including GRAIL, New Horizons, and the proposed Io Volcano Observer.
Views: 4

Online Beginner's Class
2020-11-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to public online event, to attend please register with zoom using the link on the box above.
The 3rd session of the Beginners Astronomy Class covers different methods of finding objects in the night sky. Special topic is learning the constellations.
Views: 4

Ventura County Astronomical Society's Online General Meeting
2020-10-16 20:30 - 22:30 | Online
This is an online event held by OCA for VCAS.
No prior registration is required but when entering the webinar, zoom will ask for your name and email.
At the time of the meeting, to attend via zoom app click here, via your browser click here.
To install the zoom app click here.

2020: A Year of Perseverance and Ingenuity
Sarah Elizabeth McCandless

Sarah Elizabeth McCandless works for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as a navigation engineer. She performs operational as well as pre-launch orbit determination analyses and has worked on a variety of flight projects including MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), InSight, Mars 2020, and Europa Clipper. She also develops multi-mission software tools and has researched the feasibility of using optical communication observables for deep-space navigation. She earned a B.S. in aerospace engineering and a minor in French at the University of Kansas. Subsequently, she earned an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas. Outside of work, Sarah Elizabeth enjoys flying Cessna 172s, hiking, and reading.
Views: 4

Online General Meeting - October 2020
2020-10-09 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is an online event, to attend please register with zoom using the link on the box above.
Download: Club Announcements
This meeting’s speaker changed at the last minutes and the information reflected here has not been updated.
Dark Matter and the Dance of Dwarf Galaxies

Major galaxies, such as our cosmic home the Milky Way, the nearby Andromeda galaxy, or Centaurus A, are surrounded by swarms of smaller dwarf satellite galaxies. Over the past 15 years, our knowledge of these satellite galaxies has exploded. The number of known Milky Way satellites has quadrupled, and highly precise measurements of their motions have provided unprecedented insights into their complex orbital dance. In my research, I investigate the distribution and motion of satellite galaxies to test our ideas of how the cosmos in general, and galaxies in particular, have formed and evolved. Our current leading model of cosmology was largely developed on cosmic scales, and implies that most of the mass in the Universe is dominated by unknown stuff: Dark Matter. Based on this cosmological model, computer simulations can nowadays follow the emergence and evolution of structure in model universes. These simulations predict the distribution and properties of galaxies down to the smallest scales (astronomically speaking). They predict a highly chaotic tangle of satellite galaxies. In contrast, my research finds that the observed situation resembles an ordered choreography: the satellite galaxies around the Milky Way, Andromeda, and Centaurus A are aligned along planes. Many satellites also move along these structures in a common direction. This finding poses a serious challenge to our model of cosmology – and might point at a fundamental misinterpretation of cosmic proportions.
Marcel S. Pawlowski

My research is situated at the intersection of observations and cosmological simulations. I am most interested in testing our cosmological knowledge and our understanding of the properties and dynamics of dwarf galaxies with observations of nearby systems of satellite galaxies. After receiving my PhD from the University of Bonn in 2013, I moved to the United States for a postdoc position at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2016, I was awarded a NASA Hubble Fellowship to work at the University of California Irvine. At the end of 2018 I moved back to Germany to my current position as Schwarzschild Fellow at the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam.
Views: 4

Private Outreach - Canceled
2020-10-02 20:00 - 21:30 | La Paz Middle School, 25151 Pradera Dr, Mission Viejo, CA, 92691, United States

Online Beginner's Class
2020-10-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public; to attend please register using the zoom.us link on the box above.
The 2nd session of the Beginners Astronomy Class covers the different types of equipment used to observe the night sky, including telescopes, mounts, eyepieces, filters, and advantages and disadvantages of different options.
This session is a must if thinking about buying a telescope.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Views: 4

Virtual Outreach
2020-09-30 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
Event: Washington Elementary
Date: Wednesday, 9/30/2020
Time: Viewing at 7:00 PM, Sunset at 7:45 PM
Place: Washington Elementary
Address: 4225 Sanborn Ave; Lynwood, 90262
Location: 33°55’29″N, 118°11’23″W
Views: 4

Ventura County Astronomical Society's Online General Meeting
2020-09-25 20:30 - 22:30 | Online
This is an online event held by OCA for VCAS.
No prior registration is required but when entering the webinar, zoom will ask for your name and email.
At the time of the meeting, to attend via zoom app click here, via your browser click here.
To install the zoom app click here.

It Broke! A Story of How We Fixed It

NASA’s Deep Space 1 (DS1) mission was designed to take risks so subsequent missions would not have to. Following its successful 1998-1999 prime mission to test new technologies, DS1 embarked on an ambitious two-year extended mission dedicated to comet exploration. However, that journey was soon interrupted as the probe suffered a hardware failure widely considered to be catastrophic.
Under Marc Rayman’s leadership, the JPL operations team then undertook one of the most remarkable deep-space rescue missions ever attempted. After seven months of intensive and stressful work, they managed to restore the spacecraft to an operational capability from well over 150 million miles away. DS1 then resumed its pursuit of the comet. The team encountered and overcame more daunting challenges in the subsequent 15 months, and in 2001 they succeeded in acquiring NASA’s first close-up images of a comet nucleus and other unique data.

This extraordinary and exciting success story is not well known, even among the astronomy and space communities. Dr. Rayman described it in a highly entertaining and inspiring public presentation last year. He will introduce the video, we will all watch it, and then he will answer questions. The video can be found here.
Marc Rayman

Marc Rayman is not only a top rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory but also a magnificent communicator. He is currently JPL’s chief engineer for mission operations and science.
He grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and earned a B.A. in physics from Princeton University. His undergraduate work focused on astrophysics and cosmology. He received an M.S. in physics from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he conducted investigations in nuclear physics. He then performed research at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) on experimental tests of special relativity and atomic and laser physics, and received his Ph.D. there. He continued at JILA as a postdoctoral researcher. Throughout his time at JILA, he worked with Dr. John Hall, who subsequently won a Nobel Prize in Physics.
Dr. Rayman combined his scientific training with his lifelong study and passion for astronomy and the exploration of space by joining JPL in 1986. His work there has spanned a broad range, including optical interferometry missions to detect planets around other stars, design of a mission to return samples from Mars, a laser altimeter for Mars, the Spitzer infrared space telescope, the development of systems to use lasers instead of radios to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft, and more.

In 1994, he helped initiate a new NASA program to characterize highly sophisticated and risky technologies for future space science missions by flying them on dedicated test flights. The first mission of this New Millennium program, Deep Space 1, was launched in 1998, and he worked on it from its inception in 1995 to its conclusion in 2001. During the course of the project, Dr. Rayman served as chief mission engineer, mission director, and project manager. The new technologies that were tested on DS1 (including such exotic systems as ion propulsion and artificial intelligence) were designed to reduce the cost and risk and to improve the performance of subsequent interplanetary missions. The primary mission was extremely successful and led to a very productive and exciting extension, culminating in a spectacular encounter with Comet Borrelly that yielded NASA’s first close-up pictures of the nucleus of a comet. The spacecraft remains in orbit around the Sun.
He was chief engineer, mission director, and project manager on a mission that built on DS1 to explore the two largest uncharted worlds in the inner solar system. Launched in 2007, Dawn orbited two giants of the main asteroid belt, protoplanet Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, in an ambitious mission to reveal insights into the dawn of the solar system. After a spectacularly successful investigation of Vesta in 2011-2012, it arrived at Ceres in 2015, where it will remain forever. It is the only spacecraft ever to orbit two extraterrestrial destinations. The spacecraft outlasted its expected lifetime, and the mission concluded successfully in 2018.

Dr. Rayman is the recipient of numerous honors. His many accolades from NASA include a remarkable three Exceptional Achievement Medals and four Outstanding Leadership Medals, which are among NASA’s most selective awards. He was named a JPL Fellow, the highest technical position there, “for extraordinary technical contributions made over an extended period.” He is the only person to have received both the Exceptional Technical Excellence Award and the Exceptional Leadership Award, two of JPL’s most prestigious honors. Asteroid Rayman was named in recognition of his contributions to space exploration. On behalf of the Dawn team, in 2016 he accepted the Robert J. Collier Trophy, the greatest award in the US for space or aviation. (The trophy resides at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington.) Among his other honors was receiving the Astronautics Engineer of the Year Award from the National Space Club and Foundation.

Marc is also very active in education and public outreach. He is a highly regarded and very popular speaker, relating the thrill of science and the excitement of discovery, and he has appeared frequently on television and been quoted often in other news media on subjects as wide-ranging as DS1 and Dawn, a fire onboard the Mir space station, the discovery of the top quark, and the profundity of humankind’s exploration of the cosmos. He collaborates with the creator of the popular syndicated comic strip Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! for special editions on science topics. His DS1 blog had an enormous following and gained critical acclaim as it provided an exceptionally entertaining and informative view into the flight of DS1, and his Dawn blog continued in the same delightful style. Marc is technical advisor and a popular writer for NASA’s educational website the Space Place (where his digital alter ego, Dr. Marc, resides). Marc received a special award from JPL for his creative and engaging work to inform and inspire the public.
In addition to more than 75 scholarly publications in physics, space science, and space engineering, he has published many articles on Apollo, Skylab, the space shuttle, piloted and robotic missions of the former USSR, interplanetary missions, and a variety of topics in astrophysics, cosmology, and space exploration for reference books, encyclopedias, magazines, and newspapers.

One of Marc’s favorite hobbies is learning about the space activities of all space-faring nations. Since before the age of 10, he has been building an extensive collection of information (and memorabilia) from over 40 nations. (His extraordinary personal collection is featured in this amusing video tour geared for space buffs.)
His other hobbies include international dancing (he and his wife teach and dance with several groups), photography, hiking, and other outdoor activities. Marc also holds a black belt in karate. His wife, Dr. Janice Rayman, is a brain scientist and a very experienced mountaineer. They live in La Cañada, California, with their cats, Quark and Lepton, tropical fish, and a large variety of fauna and flora in their pond.

Views: 4

OCA Board meeting
2020-09-20 10:30 - 12:30 | CA
The OCA board meeting will be at 10:30am and is open to all members. Contact Alan Smallbone the OCA secretary for more information and the link to join the online zoom meeting.
Views: 4

Online General Meeting - September 2020
2020-09-11 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please use the zoom.us link on the box above.
Uncovering the Death Throes of Massive Stars Through Supernovae

Stars more massive than about 10 solar masses explode at the end of their life and die as supernovae. How massive stars look like when they explode? Astronomers try to answer this question through supernovae. It has been recently recognized that massive stars seem to have an unexpectedly active life just before they explode. In this talk, I will introduce supernovae and what they tell us about the “death throes” of massive stars.
Takashi Moriya

I am an Assistant Professor at National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). I was born and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. I received my PhD in Astronomy from the University of Tokyo in 2013. I worked at University of Bonn in Germany as a postdoctoral research fellow from 2013 to 2016 and moved to NAOJ in 2016. My research interest is mainly in theoretical aspects of supernovae and stellar evolution, but I also work on observational astronomy using the Subaru telescope operated by NAOJ.
Views: 4

Online Beginner's Class
2020-09-04 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please use the zoom.us link on the box above.
The first session of the Beginners Astronomy Class gives a general overview of all of the different objects you can see in the night and day time skies, with some history and information about what they are and their significance. An overview of the current scientific understanding of the Universe’s beginning, present and future is also covered.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Views: 4

Open Spiral Bar
2020-08-15 22:00 - 23:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please use the zoom registration link on the box above.
Come and socialize with your fellow astronomy enthusiasts face-to-face virtually!
Bring your latest astrophotos, mini-presentation, questions or none and your own refreshments.

Views: 4

Online General Meeting - August 2020
2020-08-14 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please use the zoom registration link on the box above.
Solar Eclipses: Math, Science, and Spectacle
A composite image of the 2013 total solar eclipse at solar maximum. (Photos by Jay Pasachoff, Allen Davis, and Vojtech Rusin; computer compositing by Miloslav Druckmüller)
As a veteran of 72 solar eclipses —including 35 total solar eclipses, 18 annular solar eclipses, and 19 partial solar eclipses— astronomer Jay Pasachoff is uniquely positioned to share recent scientific work related to eclipses, international coordination of observations, and future plans. What role does mathematics play in predicting eclipses, from the ancient saros observations to Halley’s 1715 map, and up to today’s web-based zoom-and-click maps? How do theoretical predictions based on magnetic-field measurements, emission spectra of high ionization lines, and radio observations compare to the high res images available today?
The sky with the total eclipse corona and the umbra during the July 2, 2019, total solar eclipse photographed from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile (David Sliski, as part of the Williams College Expedition).
The beautiful streamers that become dramatically visible during an eclipse’s totality are shaped by the solar corona’s magnetic field. How do theoretical predictions based on magnetic-field measurements, emission spectra of high ionization lines, and radio observations compare to the high res images available today?

I will discuss my expeditions to recent solar eclipses, including total eclipses in the United States in 2017 and in Chile in 2019, as well as the annular solar eclipse in India in 2019. I will also discuss the next solar eclipses, including Chile and Argentina on December 14, 2020, and Mexico/United States/Canada on April 28, 2024, and the October 14, 2023, annular eclipse for which the partial-eclipse coverage of the Sun’s diameter from Orange County will be 78%. I will emphasize current topics of research of current solar eclipses, and how they link with the Sun-Earth connection and our understanding of the coronas of trillions of other stars.

Jay Pasachoff

Jay Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Visiting Scientist at Carnegie Observatories. (Prior to his Williams College appointment, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and what was then called the Hale Observatories—Mt. Wilson and Palomar.) A veteran of 72 solar eclipses, he is Chair of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Solar Eclipses and a member of the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Eclipse Task Force.

His recent research includes studies of the dynamics of the solar corona studied from the ground at eclipses and from spacecraft, and the temperature and structure of the corona over the solar-activity cycle from images and spectra. He also studies the atmosphere of Pluto through observation of stellar occultations and participated in the occultation study of Arrokoth that led to the diversion of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to image it on January 1, 2019, with the farthest-from-Earth photograph ever taken. His current eclipse research is supported by the Solar Terrestrial Program of the Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation. His Pluto/Arrokoth research has been supported by NASA.

Pasachoff received the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the 2012 Janssen Prize of the Société Astronomique de France, the 2015 Richtmyer Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the 2019 Klumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Views: 4

Online Beginner's Class
2020-08-07 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event is free and open to public, to attend please use the zoom registration link on the box above.
The 6th session of the Beginners Astronomy Class covers the basics of astrophotography, covering different types of imaging, how different types of cameras are used for this kind of photography, and other equipment and considerations for taking a good picture.
This session is taught by Kyle Coker, who is active in the club’s AstroImaging special interest group.
Free and open to the public as well as members of OCA.
Views: 4

Board of Directors Meeting
2020-07-12 10:30 - 12:30 | CA

Open Spiral Bar
2020-07-11 22:00 - 23:30 | Online
RSVP using the link on the box above.
Please install/update zoom client prior to the event.
Come and socialize with your fellow astronomy enthusiasts face-to-face virtually!
Bring your latest astrophotos, mini-presentation, questions or none and your own refreshments.

Views: 4

Online General Meeting - July 2020
2020-07-10 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
RSVP using the link on the box above.
Please install/update zoom client prior to the event.

Cosmic Dawn: The Birth of Galaxies in our Universe

The Milky Way is but one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in our observable Universe. Modern astronomical telescopes have revealed a rich ecosystem of galaxies, but our Universe wasn’t always that way. In fact, there was a time when galaxies did not exist. In this talk, I will describe how astronomers are trying to unravel the mystery of how and when the first galaxies formed.
Anson D’Aloisio

I am an Assistant Professor in the Physics & Astronomy Department at UC Riverside. My research interests are in the fields of theoretical astrophysics and cosmology. I am particularly interested in the formation of structures in the Universe (e.g. galaxies and galaxy clusters), the epoch of reionization, and gravitational lensing. I was born and raised in Middletown, Connecticut. I did my undergraduate work at the University of California, Riverside, where I received my B.S. in Physics (minor in Math) in 2005. I went to graduate school at Yale University and received my Ph.D. in Physics in 2011. From there, I took postdoctoral positions at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington.
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Online Beginner's Class
2020-07-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
RSVP using the zoom.us link on the box above.
Please install/update zoom client prior to the event.
This is the “How to Use Your Telescope” session of the Beginners Astronomy Class. If you have a telescope and would like some help learning to set it up and use it, bring it along to this class. Or attend to just learn and look through a telescope.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Free and open to the public as well as members of OCA.
Note: All who attend will be invited to visit our monthly Orange County star party.
Views: 4

Open Meeting - June 2020
2020-06-14 10:30 - 12:00 | Online
Come and socialize with your fellow astronomy enthusiasts face-to-face at this online meeting!
Bring your latest AstroPhotos or questions or mini-presentation.
This event was created as a response to those who missed the social interaction opportunity provided at our in-person general meetings.
Views: 4

General Meeting - June 2020
2020-06-12 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This event has passed.
To provide feedback about the meeting, click here.

Our Dusty Universe

The two first images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project combined to show a whole view of the Milky Way as could be seen with the unaided eye, and a more central region observed with an amateur telescope.

Most of the heavy elements that make up the Earth and everything on it (including us) once resided in tiny grains of dust in interstellar space. I will describe the fascinating lives of interstellar dust grains from their formation in fiery supernova explosions to their incorporation into planets like Earth. Although dust is an important player in many processes happening in our Galaxy, it is still very mysterious. I will explain how we are working to understand the properties of interstellar dust both in our Galaxy and others using space telescopes like Spitzer, Herschel and, soon, the James Webb Space Telescope.

Karin Sandstrom

I received my Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley. I then moved to Heidelberg, Germany as a postdoctoral researcher in the Galaxies and Cosmology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In 2011, I was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship from the European Union to continue my postdoctoral work at MPIA. I moved to Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in 2013 to become the Bok Postdoctoral Fellow. In August 2015, I started as an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences.
Views: 4

Beginner's Class
2020-06-05 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This online event has ended.
The 4th session of the Beginners Astronomy Class covers the science behind the telescope.
How do our eyes actually perceive objects we see in the telescope and what is the physics that allows that perception.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Free and open to the public as well as members of OCA.
Note: All who attend will be invited to visit our monthly Orange County star party.
Views: 4

Palomar Science
2020-05-30 11:00 - 12:30 | Online
An online talk open to all in which Kin Searcy, one of the Palomar Docents, will survey the many questions in astronomy that have been addressed for the last 70 years by professional researchers at Palomar Observatory.
Use the link on the top box to join.
Zoom Meeting ID: 996 5232 6483
Views: 4
