Announcement - The St. Louis Astronomical Society ("SLAS") is distributing FREE solar eclipse glasses (while supplies last) to attendees of SLAS events from February to April 2024. There is a limit of 5 glasses per family and 2 glasses per child. To learn more about these events, please visit the SLAS event calendar.  Click the following link to view the event calendar: https://slasonline.org/events/our-events. Contact the St. Louis Astronomical Society for more details: https://slasonline.org/contact-us

 

SLAS Regular Meeting

McDonnell Hall, Washington University - St. Louis

7:30pm Friday, April 19, 2024

 

 “Understanding the Dark Universe with the Vera Rubin Observatory”

by

Gautham Narayan, PhD  ;  Univ of Illinois

 

Atop Cerro Pachon, at the southern reach of the Atacama Desert, scientists and engineers are building the largest machine ever conceived for astrophysics – the Vera Rubin Observatory. Next year, it will begin taking measurements as part of the “Legacy Survey of Space and Time,” surveying the entire available southern sky every four nights. With its 3.2 Gigapixel camera, Rubin Observatory will take 20 TB of data every night, and at the end of its 10-year survey, will have resolved 17 billion stars in our Milky Way, and discovered 20 billion galaxies outside of ours, and found 10 million sources that change every night – supernovae, quasars, asteroids, variable stars and things we haven’t even seen before. One of Rubin’s key missions is to understand the nature of matter and energy in our Universe in the “dark sector.” What is the nature of the dark matter, that astronomer Vera C. Rubin discovered in her examination of how galaxies rotate? What is this mysterious dark energy that is ~70% of the energy density of our Universe and seems to be pushing galaxies apart from each other at ever accelerating rate? I’ll tell you about the status of Rubin Observatory, and how the Dark Energy Science Collaboration will use Rubin data to try and answer these fundamental questions.

Gautham Narayan has been a professor in the department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign since 2019. He was previously a postdoc at the National Optical and Infrared Laboratory in Tucson (which runs Rubin Observatory) and the Barry M. Lasker Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore (which runs Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope). He works on melding AI and Astrophysics, to analyze massive quantities of data from wide-field surveys, particularly to study sources in the time-domain, such as supernovae and kilonovae. He is a Simonyi-NSF CAREER Fellow, and the Analysis Coordinator for the Dark Energy Science Collaboration.

 

The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, April 19 in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Danforth campus of Washington University, Saint Louis, MO 63105. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Free yellow zone and garage parking spaces are available. The event will also be available via Zoom online conference.

 

To request Zoom link, please click here

The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

 

Meeting Agenda

Main Speaker

SLAS Board Member Nominations for May Elections

Announcement Special Recognition Award Nominations are due by Sep 1st

Register now: MSRAL 2024 June 7-9, Hosted by Omaha Astronomical Society

 

Please renew your Expiring Memberships. LINK

SLAS has 2024 group permits for Whiteside and Danville.

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Please remember, eclipse glasses must be worn at all times when looking at the Sun. Only during the few minutes when the eclipse is in “Total” eclipse, is it safe to look at Sun directly.

 

When is the eclipse for Missouri? – The Solar Eclipse will occur early afternoon on Monday April 8, 2024. The Moon will start covering the Sun around 12:38pm CDT, this is called the partial phase of the eclipse. Totality begins when the moon has completely covered the Sun, this begins around 1:54pm CDT. The Moon will completely cover the Sun for up to 4 minutes and 10 seconds, depending on your location. After totality ends, the Moon will gradually uncover the Sun, and this partial eclipse will end around 3:14pm CDT. Precise times for cities and towns in Missouri can be found here: https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/total/mo

Where do I need to be to see the Totally Eclipsed Sun? – The immediate St. Louis area is NOT in the Total Eclipse Path. You must travel approximately 100 miles south or east to be inside the Total Eclipse Path. You must be inside the Total Eclipse Path to see the Moon completely cover (eclipse) the Sun. The center of this path runs from Texas to Maine, passing through: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Vermont and Maine. The Total Eclipse Path is around 120 miles wide in southeast Missouri. Outside this path you will only see a partial eclipse. Inside this path the Moon will completely block the Sun, allowing you to see the Sun’s inner and outer atmosphere and corona. Accurate maps can be found using these links:

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2024-april-8

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2024_GoogleMapFull.html

https://eclipsewise.com/2024/2024.html

Are there events and activities going on during the eclipse? – Many cities and towns in southeast Missouri will be hosting events and eclipse viewing. Some host events are spanning Friday to Monday. Check each location for details. The following website has links to Missouri eclipse events: https://moeclipse.org/

Where can I get eclipse glasses? – The St. Louis Astronomical Society ("SLAS") is distributing FREE solar eclipse glasses (while supplies last) to attendees of SLAS events from February to April 2024. There is a limit of 5 glasses per family and 2 glasses per child. To learn more about these events, please visit the SLAS event calendar.  Click the following link to view the event calendar: https://slasonline.org/events/our-events. Contact the St. Louis Astronomical Society for more details: https://slasonline.org/contact-us

 

Eclipse Educational Videos:

2024 U.S. Total Eclipse Explained (2 minutes)

Solar Eclipse 101 | National Geographic (5 minutes)

Lunar and Solar Eclipse Explained: A Beginner’s Guide to Eclipses (7 minutes)

Flyover North America for the Total Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024 (3 minutes)

 

Upcoming Meetings:

 

May 2024: Fran Bagenal, PhD. Exploration of Jupiter System: Past, Present and Future”; University of Colorado at Boulder

June 2024: Steven R Gullberg, PhD.   “Archeoastronomy”;  University of Oklahoma

 July 2024: Ashley Davies, PhD. “Juno Close Flybys of Io"; JPL

August 2024: Bradley Tsalyuk, Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, California Science Center

September 2024: Joseph Marcus, MD, "“Who Discovered the Expanding Universe?  Spoiler: Not Hubble!”

October 2024: Pamela Gay, PhD., "Secret Squirrel Stuff", Planetary Science Institute

November 2024: Robert Zubrin, PhD. “The Case for Mars”; The Mars Society

January 2025:  Bhupal Dev, PhD.  “Finding New Physics in Debris from Colliding Neutron “Stars; Washington University.

March 2025: Tom Rathjen  "What’s Happening in Human Space Flight”; The Aerospace Corporation

 

SLAS in the News

HECMedia: Dark Sky Missouri - Stacy Park Olivette, MO

Ladue News:  Seeing stars: Upcoming events and opportunities for St. Louis stargazing,

Jefferson County Leader: Aim for the Stars, By Kevin Carbery, July 27, 2023

KMOV Channel 4 did a morning story on June 20, 2023 about the Library Telescope Program and the upcoming solar eclipses

https://www.kmov.com/video/2023/06/20/great-day-4-kids/

 

Our new SLAS coffee mugs have arrived. They will be available to purchase at
our regular meetings at Washington U. Price: $10 each, 2 for $15
 

 

 

 

2024 Astronomy Events by Mark Jones



Social Hour - 30 min after meeting conclusion or 10:30 Which ever is earlier.

Randy Harrison's Lookin' Up Optics page:  http://lookinup.info/

Here are the websites that Dr. Gokhale mentioned in his talk in June
Dark Sky Missouri
www.darkskymissouri.org
Video: 'Saving the Dark' A film on Light Pollution by  Sriram Murali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fHxNn-FEnc

Globe at Night program for light pollution

https://www.globeatnight.org/

 

 

Telescopes for Sale! 

 4.25-inch f/10, Reflecting Telescope, Wooden Tripod, 6x30mm finder, 1 ¼ focuser, $10
 
Majestic Tripod Head-only, Heavy Duty head, w/1/4x20 screw mount, Mounts to 1.5” post, crank pivots head in altitude direction, $10
 
Small Equatorial Mount. Manual with slow motion knobs and counterweight. Similar to Sky-Watcher EQ-2 mount, $30
 
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  - Link for details and photos
 



 Shirts and Mugs for sale!

Shirts and Mugs for Sale

All shirts are $10!!!

Moon Shirt
Globular Cluster Shirt
Pleiades Shirt

 There is also a Dobsonian shirt

New Poster from Guy Ottwell you might be interested in
It's called the Zodiac Wavy Chart
 
https://www.universalworkshop.com/zodiac-wavy-charts/?mc_cid=cfa6f33be8&mc_eid=9d6fcdbdfa