* * * * * * Information is subject to change * * * * * *
Don Parker
Thursday
Amateur Contributions to Solar System Astronomy
Ron Buta
Friday and Saturday
Astronomy and the Coal Age of Alabama
The Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site in north-central Alabama is a window to Earth's Coal Age. Here, people have found the footprints of animals that lived long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. One of the most interesting things about the site is its age. The rocks are part of the Pottsville Formation, which has been dated at about 310 Myr old. What does such an age really mean? In my presentation, I will describe the "deep time" represented by the Minkin Site in terms of astronomy: how does it compare to the ages of stars, the timescales of movement in the Milky Way Galaxy, the orbit of the Sun in the Milky Way, the rotation of the Milky Way, the distances to galaxies, and other interesting timescales. What did the star-gazing tetra pods of Alabama's Coal Age see in their sky? What were the other planets like? There is much we can learn by asking such questions.
Rendezvous with Birr Castle: a Visit to the Heart of Early Irish Astronomy
Birr Castle, in Offaly County, Ireland, is a special place in the history of astronomy. It was here where, in the 1840s, William Parsons, the Third Earl of Rosse, built the world's largest telescope and visually discovered the spiral structure of galaxies. In this presentation, I will describe what I saw when I visited the grounds of the castle in July, 2007, and will show photographs of the recently built replica of the old telescope, the famous 72-inch "Leviathan." accompanying picture: William Parsons, Third Earl of Rosse, Birr Castle Museum (photo credit: R. Buta)
Bill Keel
Thursday and Saturday
Astronomy for a Flat World - the public and the data
The spread of networking and computer familiarity raises exciting new possibilities for public involvement in research. We've seen SETI@home, Einstein@home, and so on. The next step was taken with the Galaxy Zoo project, harnessing an unexpected 125,000 participants worldwide to classify galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in ways that software still doesn't do as well as the human brain. This effort has solved questions about galaxy orientation, raised new questions about whether color or form is more important in galaxy history, and provided new samples of galaxies for studies of late star formation and dust content, The team has been especially excited about the discovery of "Hanny's Voorwerp", which seems to be gas illuminated by a dying quasar only 100,000 years ago - for which follow up Hubble observing approval was announced in the 25th birthday of its discoverer, a Dutch schoolteacher. Galaxy Zoo 2 will go public shortly, and arrangements have been made for Galaxy Zoo 3 as new surveys are carried out. This project has demonstrated what a win-win proposition this kind of global public involvement can become. You can see some possible teaser images of the Voorwerp on my research page at http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/voorwerp.html and of galaxy pairs from the Galaxy Zoo folks that we're using to measure dust at http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/GZOverlapMosaic1.jpg and http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/GZOverlapMosaic2.jpg (their forum was zapped by the massive server-farm failure in Texas, so it's just as well those were on our own web server).
Charlie Warren
TBD
AeroSpace Environmental Traveling Exhibit
Friday and Saturday
The AeroSpace Environmental Traveling Exhibit is a mobile educational vehicle for “spreading the word” in the area of environmental protection aspects of our aeronautics programs and other areas of research being done at the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio.
Jonn Serrie
Friday
The Stargazer's Journey
Jonn will play music during the evening Friday night under the starry skies of the DAV.
If it happens to be cloudy we will run movies in the Big Tent.
Donald C. Parker
Donald C. Parker, also known as Don Parker, is an retired physician and amateur astronomer, specializing in the research of the Solar System and planetary photography. Many of his over 20,000 images of Mars were used also by professional astronomers at NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and some observatories and published in numerous books and journals, including
Science and
Nature. In 2000 he co-authored the book
Introduction to Observing and Photographing the Solar System. He is a past director of the
Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers.
In 1994 the Mars-crosser asteroid 5392 Parker was named in his honor. One year later his planetary images were acknowledged with the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In 2004 he received the Gold Medal of the Oriental Astronomical Association for his work on Mars.
Ron Buta
Ron Buta received his undergraduate degree in astronomy from Case Western Reserve University and his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Ron's PhD supervisor was Gerard Henri de Vaucouleurs, a native of Paris who made many important contributions to extra galactic and planetary astronomy. Ron's research is focused on the morphology and dynamics of galaxies and culminated recently with the publication of "The de Vaucouleurs Atlas of Galaxies" (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Bill Keel
I grew up in Nashville, mowing yards for a summer to buy a secondhand 6-inch Dynascope. By then I was hooked. I studied at Vanderbilt and UC Santa Cruz before working successively at Kitt Peak, Leiden, and Alabama. My research has centered around galaxies - their history, internal structure, interactions, and nuclei, work which has taken me to Kitt Peak, Lick, Mt. Lemmon, the VLA, Hawaii, La Palma, Cerro Tololo, La Silla, Palomar, even the Russian 6-meter telescope, and then on to pursue observations from space. If I can remember them, I've had projects scheduled on Hubble, Chandra, IUE, ROSAT, FUSE, GALEX, and ISO, and used data from Voyager 2, Einstein, Spitzer, and IRAS. In addition to academic publishing rather than perishing, I've done articles for Sky and Telescope, Astronomy, and Griffith Observer, and written "The Sky at Einstein's Feet" and two editions of "The Road to Galaxy Formation". Our group jumped on the Web early, and my image gallery and galaxy pages continue to be popular digital resources.
Charlie Warren
Charlie is an avid astrophotographer as well as the editor of
Amateur Astronomy Magazine
Jonn Serrie
Jonn is the foremost composer of space music. His name is synonymous with this genre of electronic music. Known for his numerous works commissioned for planetariums around the world, he has reshaped and redefined ambient space music. In addition to his twelve albums, his body of work includes diverse projects with Lucasfilm Ltd., NASA, the United States Navy, Hayden Planetarium, Expo Seville, and CNN.
Jonn's interest in electronic music began early with piano and church organ studies, eventually leading to a position as resident synthesist at Connecticut-based Electronic Music Laboratories in the 1970's. A fascination with space and aviation became the theme for his unique musical style. He is an FAA licensed pilot and lives in Atlanta.
Jonn Serrie's music covers a broad range of electronic music styles, from deep space ambiences to elegant romantic melodies, each with his unique signature sound woven throughout. Jonn's music is available at music stores and web sites worldwide.
