Orange County Astronomers

Third Quarter Moon
2022-07-20, 2022-06-20, 2022-05-22
Views: 2

OCA Board Meeting
2022-07-17 10:30 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online
The OCA Board meeting will be held online via zoom and is open to all members. Please contact Alan Smallbone if interested in attending. Meeting starts at 10:30am.
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Astrophysics Special Interest Group
2022-07-15 19:30 - 22:00, 2022-06-17 19:30 - 22:00, 2022-05-20 19:30 - 22:00, 2022-04-29 19:30 - 22:00 | Heritage Museum of OC, 3101 W Harvard St, Santa Ana, CA, 92704, United States
The monthly meeting of the Astrophysics Special Interest Group at 7:30 at the Heritage Museum. Please contact the SIG chair for details and requirements. See the Contacts section of the website for details on contacting the group.
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Full Moon
2022-07-13, 2022-06-14, 2022-05-15

Open Spiral Bar
2022-07-09 22:00 - 23:30, 2022-06-11 22:00 - 23:30, 2022-05-14 22:00 - 23:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event.
Join Zoom

Come and socialize with your fellow astronomy enthusiasts face-to-face virtually!
Bring your latest astrophotography, mini-presentation, questions or none and your own refreshments.

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Online General Meeting – July 2022
2022-07-08 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event.
Join Zoom

Rovers on Mars: 21st Century

Natural History

Expeditions to Another Planet

Perseverance and Ingenuity are the current culmination of a long list of missions to Mars. During the first 400 days of operation on the surface of Mars Perseverance has traveled over 12 kilometers and Ingenuity has flown 28+ times. In addition to observations focused on understanding the geologic history and context of four+ samples collected for eventual return to Earth at this time, Perseverance has made a variety of observations of the atmosphere and the moons of Mars. At the time of this presentation we will be well into the exploration of the enormous delta deposited by an ancient river onto the floor of Jezero Crater where Perseverance landed.

Larry S. Crumpler, Ph.D. is Research Curator in Volcanology and Space Sciences at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. He received his doctorate from the University of Arizona in Planetary Sciences and MS from the University of New Mexico in Geology. Prior to the Museum, he worked at Brown University.
He is a member of the Perseverance Rover Mission science team where he is responsible for geologic context mapping of the terrain traversed by the rover. Previously, he was a team member on Ingenuity helicopter development, Mars Exploration Rover (Spirit & Opportunity) where he served as “Long-term Planning Lead,” Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (HiRISE).
He previously participated in NASA’s Viking and Pathfinder Mars, Magellan mission to Venus, Russian Mars 96 mission planning, Mars landing site selection and rover field tests. He has published numerous research papers, book chapters, and geologic maps; and a book about Mars that will be published by Harper-Collins in late 2021. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
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First Quarter Moon
2022-07-06, 2022-06-07, 2022-05-08

Beginner's Class
2022-07-01 19:30 - 21:30 | Orange Coast College, Building 40, Astronomy House, Merrimac Way, Costa Mesa, CA, 92626, United States
This is a free and open to the public event.
The 5th session of the Beginners Astronomy Class is the “How to Use Your Telescope”.
If you have a telescope and would like some help learning to set it up and use it, attend this Hands-on class.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Views: 2

NEW MOON
2022-06-28, 2022-05-30, 2022-04-30

Adopt-a-Scope Pickup
2022-06-11 09:00 - 12:00 | South Coast Self Sorage, 3480 W Warner Ave, Santa Ana, CA, 92704, United States

Online General Meeting – June 2022
2022-06-10 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event.
Join Zoom

Three Decades of

the Hubble Space Telescope

After decades of discussion and construction, the Hubble Space Telescope was finally launched on April 24, 1990. While HST was not the first space telescope, it represented a major expansion in capability that has helped upend humanity’s understanding of the universe. HST helped show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and has transformed our view of the universe with a remarkable set of Hubble Deep Field images, amongst other things. Along the way, the engineers, scientists and astronauts behind HST managed to overcome a debilitating optical problem and have kept HST making discoveries for more than three decades. Now HST is about to work in tandem with its successor, the James Webb Telescope.
Not Yet Imagined E-flyer

Christopher Gainor is a historian of technology specializing in space exploration and aeronautics. He has written four books on the history of space exploration and two on Cold War history. His most recent book is a history of Hubble Space Telescope operations published by NASA. Gainor is editor of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly. From 2018 to 2020, he was President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and he is a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Gainor holds a Ph.D. in the history of technology from the University of Alberta, and has worked as a history instructor at the University of Victoria and the Royal Military College of Canada.

https://chrisgainor.ca

https://www.facebook.com/Gainorbooks

https://twitter.com/chrisgainor
Views: 2

Online Beginner's Class
2022-06-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event, to attend please register with zoom by clicking here.
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.
Views: 2

TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
2022-05-15 19:30 - 23:50

OCA Board Meeting
2022-05-15 10:00 - 13:00 | Online
The OCA Board Meeting will be held on May 15th at 10:00am. The meeting is open to all members of the OCA, to attend contact Alan Smallbone for the meeting details.
Views: 2

Online General Meeting - May 2022
2022-05-13 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event.
Join Zoom

Oumuamua: The nearest exoplanet?

When ‘Oumuamua passed by Earth in October 2017, the only thing certain about it was that it was not from this Solar System. Because of its high velocity, it was the first confirmed interstellar object. The next year the object 2I/Borisov was the second confirmed interstellar object. But whereas Borisov behaved very much like a comet (albeit an unusual one), mysteries remain about what ‘Oumuamua actually is. Although it pushed away from the Sun by a rocket effect, like comets, it could not be made of water, or contain much carbon monoxide or dust, making it very unlike a comet. The acceleration it experienced was very large, and from the variations in sunlight it reflected, it was more elongated than any other solar system object: either a very skinny pancake or a very long cigar. Dozens of explanations have been proposed to explain these oddities, and speculation has run rampant, with some astronomers even suggesting it was alien technology. The truth is more mundane but no less exciting. In a pair of papers in 2021, Steve Desch and Alan Jackson demonstrated that ‘Oumuamua is consistent in every way with being a small fragment resembling the surface of Pluto. Our own solar system must have ejected trillions of fragments like ‘Oumuamua in its early days, and a population of fragments from the surfaces of Pluto-like exoplanets must be common throughout the Galaxy. ‘Oumuamua itself may have been ejected about 400 million years ago, from a Pluto-like exoplanet in a young system in the Perseus arm of the Galaxy. ‘Oumuamua is arguably the closest we’ve ever come to directly observing the surface of an exoplanet.

Steve Desch is a Professor of astrophysics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. He studies the formation and evolution of planets, the origins of the Solar System, exoplanets, and meteorites. He has written about ‘Oumuamua in the popular press and is thrilled to have contributed to our scientific understanding of this unique object.”

https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/oumuamua-alien-ship-anthropomorphize-space.html

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Online Beginner's Class
2022-05-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Online
This is a free and open to the public online event, to attend please register with zoom by clicking here.
The 3rd session of the Beginners Astronomy Class covers different methods of finding objects in the night sky. Special topic is learning the constellations.
For details, please visit here and download the sample information PDF package.
Views: 2

Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower
2022-05-06 - 2022-05-07
This above-average meteor shower runs from April 19-May 28. The best place to see it is in the Southern Hemisphere, where it produces about 60 meteors an hour, but it’s a decent show in the Northern Hemisphere, too, and viewers in this part of the world can expect to see about half that many
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