Astronomical Assoc. of Northern California

Please join the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society for our September 23 general meeting featuring Jeff Adkins, an astronomy and physics teacher at Deer Valley High School in Antioch and Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, who will explain celestial coordinate systems including Altitude/Azimuth, Equatorial Right Ascension (RA) and declination (Dec), eliocentric and galactic coordinates, and how they relate to your telescope. He will answer questions like: Why is RA in hours and Dec in degrees? Why does RA count backward in the sky? And what do other coordinate systems have to do with it? The meeting starts at 7:15 p.m. with a short “What’s Up?” presented by MDAS President Tara Mostofi, who will discuss her Barcroft and Yosemite dark-sky adventures. Our meetings are held in the Lindsay Wildlife Experience Community Room, 1931 First Avenue, Walnut Creek, CA 94597
The Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society's past monthly lectures are available online on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0b_iOjsBldgdjs4aEOas_w?app=desktop
Check our web site www.mdas.net or email outreachinfo@mdas.net

1. Sign in or create a free account at: https://www.campusce.net/sfsu/account/signin.aspx
2. Join the Institute at: https://www.campusce.net/sfsu/course/course.aspx?catId=14 (a modest fee)
3. Register for the class at:
   https://www.campusce.net/sfsu/course/course.aspx?C=559&pc=138&mc=0&sc=0
   Andrew Fraknoi retired as Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College in 2017. He was chosen the California Professor of the Year in 2007 by the Carnegie Endowment and has won several national prizes for his teaching. He is the lead author of OpenStax Astronomy, a free, electronic textbook, which is now the leading astronomy textbook in North America. Recently, he has been writing science fiction stories with good astronomy in them; 11 of his tales have been published so far. He appears regularly on local & national radio, explaining astronomical ideas in terms everyone can understand. The International Astronomical Union has named Asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi to recognize his contributions to the public appreciation of science. See: http://fraknoi.com for more information about his work.
   The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State is a community of inquiring adults, age 50+, offering non-credit courses, lectures, and interest groups. Many are held remotely, so you don’t need to reside in San Francisco to participate. You must become a member of the Institute to take the class, but the cost is quite reasonable.

Dr. Steven Kahn (UC Berkeley) will give a free, illustrated, non-technical lecture entitled:
"The New Vera C. Rubin Observatory: Surveying the Universe"
in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos (see directions below)
The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, now in its 26th year.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a unique ground-based astronomy facility, with the largest digital camera in the world, designed to provide a time-lapse “movie” of the entire sky from the Earth’s southern hemisphere. Over its planned ten years of operation, the Rubin Observatory will obtain nearly 1,000 images of every part of that sky. By comparing the various images, we will be able to detect everything that varies in brightness and everything that moves across the sky. By adding together all of the images, we will be able to catalog nearly 20 billion galaxies and a comparable number of stars. After 20 years of development, this facility has just come on-line and will soon begin its nightly operations. Prof. Kahn will review the design, development, and construction of Rubin, and describe the exciting science that lies ahead.
Steven M. Kahn is the Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to returning to Berkeley in 2022, Kahn was the Cassius Lamb Kirk Professor in the Natural Sciences at Stanford, and the I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Columbia. Kahn received his A.B. degree from Columbia and Ph.D. in physics from Berkeley before beginning his academic career. Kahn is an experimental astrophysicist and cosmologist who has made major contributions to multiple fields. He was the U.S. Principal Investigator on the Reflection Grating Spectrometer experiment launched on the European XMM- Newton Observatory in 1999. More recently, he served as the Director of the Rubin Observatory construction project from its inception in 2013 until his move to Berkeley in 2022. Kahn is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos.
For directions and parking information, see: https://foothill.edu/parking/
For a campus map, to find the Smithwick Theater (Bldg. 1000), see:
https://foothill.edu/map/
Note: Parking lot 1 is closest, with access to the theater by stairs. Parking lot 5 provides access from the same elevation as the theater.
The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* The Foothill College Science, Tech, Engineering & Math Division
* The SETI Institute and
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Past lectures in the series can also be found on YouTube at: http://youtube.com/svastronomylectures
and as audio podcasts at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1805595

The Stockton Astronomical Society presents
Black Holes: Space Warps, Time Machines, and the Gruesome Deaths of Stars
A nontechnical illustrated talk by Prof. Andrew Fraknoi
Free and open to the public via Zoom.
Although black holes have become part of our movies and our everyday language, few people really understand the exciting science ideas behind the science fiction. You will learn why falling into a black hole is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, how black holes make a serious kind of time machine possible, and how new instruments have allowed astronomers to detect the presence of these elusive dark objects in our Galaxy and beyond. No background in science will be required or assumed.
These days, Andrew Fraknoi teaches non-credit courses for retired adults through several universities in Northern California. He is the lead author of the free, online book "Astronomy," published by the nonprofit OpenStax project, which has become the most frequently-used introductory astronomy textbook in North America. In recent years, he has had 11 astronomically-oriented science-fiction stories published in anthologies and magazines. He served as Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for 14 years, and was selected California Professor of the Year in 2007. The International Astronomical Union has named Asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi, in recognition of his contributions to the public understanding of science. For more on his educational work and science fiction, please see: https://fraknoi.com
Zoom meeting link: http://tiny.cc/stocktonastro
For those near Stockton, California, the meeting location can be found at: www.stocktonastro.org/meetings