Mtg&Talks

The Warren astronomical Society meets on the first Monday of the month in the auditorium of the Cranbrook Institute of Science. At the meetings, we spend the first hour or so of the meeting on club business and observing reports, then have two presentations, one short and one full-length.
Main Talk:
Turning Six Telescopes into One
How Interferometry Lets Us "See" the Surfaces of Stars and the Birthplaces of Planets
By Dr John Monnier
Even with the world's largest telescopes, images of stars are still just tiny points of light due to blurring by diffraction. Optical/infrared interferometry gets around this by linking multiple telescopes so they act like one much larger virtual telescope, with the sharpness set by the separation between telescopes rather than the size of any single mirror. In this talk, he’ll explain how facilities like the CHARA Array use this trick to reach extraordinarily fine detail, enough to measure star sizes precisely and, in some cases, reconstruct actual images. We’ll tour some of the most striking results: seeing hot, rapidly spinning stars distorted by rotation, mapping interacting binary systems and eclipses, tracking starspots and magnetic activity on distant suns, and even watching a nova’s explosion unfold in its first days.
He’ll also pull back the curtain on the technology that makes this possible: single-mode optical fibers, ultra-sensitive infrared cameras, and clever optical chips that let us combine light from many telescopes efficiently. These upgrades are opening up new science, from cleaner measurements of faint companions and disks to ambitious ideas like directly probing the planet-factories around young stars. Finally, he’ll look ahead to what might come next: future concepts that push interferometry into space with the potential to detect the first signs of life beyond Earth.
About the Speaker
John Monnier obtained his Physics BS degree from Purdue University in 1993, followed by his Physics PhD from the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Charles H. Townes and William Danchi. Following a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Fellowship, Dr. Monnier began an assistant professor position at the University of Michigan in 2002. Professor Monnier's group has been responsible for development of the Michigan InfraRed Combiner (MIRC) and Michigan Young STellar Imager at CHARA (MYSTIC), the first instruments capable of infrared imaging of complex objects using long-baseline interferometry. Professor Monnier is interested in all stages of stellar and planetary evolution, with a focus on imaging surfaces of stars and planet-forming disks along with development of new methods for extrasolar planet detection and characterization.
Short Talk:
Monitoring Jupiter with Radio Waves
By Tom Hagen
Amateur radio astronomers can actually receive radio emissions from Jupiter! These occur in the shortwave radio range in the neighborhood of 15 to 40 MHz, or at wavelengths of around 20 to 7.5 meters. The emissions are caused by an interaction between Jupiter and its closest moon Io. The emissions occur at predictable times so you can watch for them when expected or have a look at stored data after the fact. There is a NASA-sponsored project called Radio Jove that provides a design for a standard receiving setup; people all over the world make observations and compare results with these setups. The sun also burps out energy in this frequency range, especially during the active part of the sunspot cycle and the Radio Jove setup does a great job tracking these too.
About the Speaker
Tom Hagen has been an amateur astronomer on and off since his high school years in the 1970's. Tom's a member of several astronomy groups besides WAS: McMath-Hulbert Astronomical Society, Oakland Astronomy Club, and the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Tom (ham radio call NE9Y) is a retired electrical engineer who worked in the automotive industry battling electrical noise issues on a car you may be driving. He lives in Rochester MI with his wife Kathy and cat Anna. In his spare time he rides his bike across Kansas.

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If you would like to present either a short talk (10-15 minutes) or a full-length talk (45-60 minutes) at a future meeting, please email Jonathan Kade at firstvp@warrenastro.org.

The views expressed in presentations are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent, and should not be attributed to, the Warren Astronomical Society.