2016 General Meeting Topics / Speakers
| January 21
| Annual Treasurer's Report, 2015 Elections, Astrophotos. Speaker: Wayne Baggett - Collimation Made Easy |
| February 18 |
Alice Bowman, the Mission Operations Manager for the New Horizons mission will be our guest speaker. While we've all seen the fantastic photos and science results that have come down from Pluto, Ms. Bowman will be able to give us an insider's account of the mission from a different perspective. |
| March 17 |
Steve Conard discusses the design and operation of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. |
| April 21 |
Jim O'Leary, lead space scientist and astronomy specialist of the Maryland Science Center, will be giving a talk about his experience in Chile last year as part of ACEAP – the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassador Program. Nine people traveled to Chile and visited the NSF-supported observatories there, including Cerro Tololo and ALMA. |
| May 19 |
HAL President, Chris Todd, speaks on how the retina works as well as solar filters and safe solar viewing. |
| June 16 |
Chris Todd speaks on the Great Solar Eclipse of 2017. |
| July 21 |
HAL's guest speaker will be Ron Denissen from JHU APL, who is the Project Manager for the STEREO mission. |
| August 18 |
Sethanne Howard is the first woman to receive a degree in physics from the University of California, Davis. She received a Master's Degree in nuclear physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in astrophysics from Georgia State University. She will be giving a talk entitled, "4000 Years of Women in Astronomy" -- We have been active astronomers at least that long. The first scientist whose name we know was an astronomer. She lived c. 2230 BCE. She was considered the Shakespeare of her time as well as a scientist. Dr. Howard will walk through 4000 years of astronomy history concentrating on the women of astronomy. The women of the 20th and 21st centuries are well known, and there are many of them. So she will concentrate on the earlier women who are less well known. Come test your knowledge of astronomy history and see how many names you recognize.
Her hobby is the history of women in science and technology, and she maintains a web site dedicated to this effort http://4kyws.ua.edu. The web pages are now an integrated part of many school and textbook curricula. Her book on the history of women in science was just published - The Hidden Giants, available at amazon.com. |
| September 15 |
In addition to member's astrophotos and sketches, Chris Todd leads an interactive session on how to describe the objects you see in the eyepiece.
The highlight of the evening will be a talk titled "The Role of Amateur Astronomers in Exoplanet Research", given by our own Dennis Conti. Dennis is now the head of the Exoplanet section of the AAVSO, and has started working on a collaboration with the Hubble Space Telescope. |
| October 20 |
No guest speaker. In addition to member's astrophotos and sketches, the topic of discussion will be visual observing. |
| November 17 |
Guest Speaker: Dr. John K Cannizzo (Goddard Space Flight Ctr/UMBC)
Title: Black Holes in the Universe
Summary: Overview of black holes in the universe,starting with the history of the subject, going through the evidence for different kinds of black holes, and finishing with the recent LIGO discoveries. |
| December 15 |
No guest speaker. Short program plus HAL's annual holiday potluck. |
