Whether you are speaking to a third grader or an adult, understanding science can be easy when the ideas are communicated effectively. I will give a brief history of my time as outreach specialist with the UW Space Place and explain why I think outreach is a vital part of the UW’s mission. I will then list the top ten things I have learned over the past 20+ years about presenting science to the general public.
Kay Kriewald has a background in teaching and tutoring elementary and middle school students in science and math. She has been an outreach specialist at Space Place since 1995. She hopes to retire soon but she is still having too much fun.
Due to the continuing high levels of infectio...
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Friday, October 15, 2021
7:30 – 9:30PM
Take a live guided tour of our Moon and other celestial objects in our solar system with members of the Madison Astronomical Society (MAS).
Program Highlights:
· Track #1 – Live Telescope Feed (weather permitting) – Explore the surface of the Moon and other celestial objects through telescopes provided by MAS members.
· Track #2 – Sky Talk (virtual planetarium sky show) – Take a virtual tour of the night sky using sky simulation software. Two different 20-minute programs will be presented and repeated.
· Track #3 – YouTube Channel (informational and educational videos) – Visit our YouTube channel and select from a number of videos, presented by members of MAS, to enhance your event experience.
Advan...
In this talk, I discuss my light pollution atlas, light pollution modeling, and recent trends in light pollution across the world. A light pollution atlas (artificial night sky brightness) is distinct from the maps that show the lights as they would appear from orbit in space looking down. These space-view maps are the input data to a model of the propagation, extinction, and scattering of light in the atmosphere. The output of the model is the estimated artificial light pollution at zenith...
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Our nearest star – the Sun – offers an ever-changing variety of astronomical phenomena, including prominences, sunspots, filaments, and prominences, that reveal the sun’s weather and can be observed from earth. As we come out of the solar minimum, solar activity is already rapidly ramping up with sunspots and solar storms. In this talk, I will give an introduction to solar imaging, some of the equipment and techniques involved used by amateur astronomers, with some examples from my own work.
Bob Hamers is a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison with a longstanding interest in space and astronomy. At UW his research centers on using light and electrons to characterize solids and nanomaterials...
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Stories of the Milky Way casting a shadow are common but details are elusive. Whenever someone wants to brag about the great dark skies they experienced they often trot out the “it was so dark you could see your shadow by the light of the Milky Way” line. Asking follow-up questions results in repetition and hand-waving.
But could it be true? Is it possible? After all, the Milky Way is large, diffuse, low contrast, and faint. The sun and moon cast shadows. Bright point sources cast shadows. It’s even said that Venus or Jupiter can cast shadows. Can the huge Milky Way, spread across 90 degrees of sky (or more), cast a shadow? In this talk, we move beyond hearsay, legend, and myth and attempt to nail down some facts and experimental results...
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Telescopes for astrophotography can be large and heavy instruments, costing thousands of dollars. For those who own DSLR cameras, there are a wide selection of available lenses that make an excellent lightweight, low cost, and easy to use platform for starting in astrophotography. We will look at some advantages (and disadvantages) of using camera lenses when photographing the night sky and examine characteristics of lenses ideally suited for astrophotography. In the second half of the presentation, we will take an introductory look at using narrowband filters for astrophotography, with emphasis on wide-field astrophotography...
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Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are an emerging sensor technology capable of detecting and time-tagging individual photons with picosecond precision. Despite (or perhaps, due to) these capabilities, SPADs are considered specialized devices suitable only for photon-starved scenarios, and restricted to a limited set of niche applications. This raises the following questions: Can SPADs operate not just in low light, but in bright scenes as well? Can SPADs be used not just with precisely controlled active light sources such as pulsed lasers, but under passive, uncontrolled illumination like cellphone or machine vision cameras?
I will describe our recent work on designing computational imaging techniques that (a) enable single-photon...
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In a modern world whose immediate history remains informed by the Cold War, it is easy for us to see the ways in which science and geopolitics intermingle. It is no secret, for example, that the rockets that power our modern space missions are products of Cold War weapons programs, nor is it a secret that the Apollo program was itself a direct response to the Soviet Union’s own triumphs in space exploration. Just as one cannot speak of the Cold War without conjuring the specter of nuclear weapons, one likewise cannot speak of the Cold War without remembering an era when espionage and spycraft came fully into the modern age. But espionage and the guarding of scientific secrets is not unique to modernity...
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This talk analyzes a solar eclipse that is described as annular, but that other reports and modern calculations show to have been very total. I explore the reasons for this odd state of affairs, since most eclipse observers are impressed by the darkness, not what’s happening immediately around the Sun. I argue that the report comes from a theoretically sophisticated observer with access to a 14th c. annular eclipse report that shaped his observation, which was then used to refute the concentric-sphere astronomy of al-Bitruji, an influential 12-13th century Arab astronomer.
Michael H...
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