MAS is back!

We’re still observing public health advisories to avoid any face to face meetings so for our April meeting, MAS is going virtual!

Friday, April 10 our own Jeff Shokler will present “Wonders of the Universe: Exploring the Night Sky Through Astrophotography.” During his presentation he will share images captured of a wide variety of astronomical objects including the Moon, planets, lunar and solar eclipses, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and much more. Over the course of the presentation he will take the audience on a journey from objects close to home to those found in some of the most distant reaches and earliest time periods of the universe...

CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS

Analysis of terrestrial zircons yields radiometric ages nearly as old as the Earth, but these ages (4 – 4.4 billion years old) have been challenged. Questions around Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) radiometric dating geochronology have been in play for over 100 years, and were first resolved in 2014 for a 4.374 billion year old zircon. These new results based on oxygen isotopes show that most of the Hadean Eon (ca. 4 – 4.4 billion years ago) was not “hell-like” as commonly believed and implied by the name. The earliest Earth was indeed hot, violent and inhospitable, but by 4.3 billion years ago its surface had cooled and the steam atmosphere condensed to form habitable oceans...

Landscape Astrophotography – Diane Ramthun

Diane Ramthun is a Wisconsin-based photographer who enjoys doing night sky landscapes. Her talk will focus primarily on viewing and photographing the dark skies over Lake Superior.

Diane: Years ago, while sailing into the remote reaches of Lake Superior, I saw the brilliant stars and Milky Way in the dark night skies for the first time. I wanted to capture what I saw and so began my interest in night sky photography. Capturing the connection of light between sky and earth has been my objective. At night over Lake Superior, the stars, Milky Way and planetary bodies cast vibrant and glowing reflections on the waters...

Tales and Tails of Star Clusters – Kyle Cudworth

Star clusters have been critical to our studies of stars and of our galaxy, as well as other areas of astrophysics. Besides their scientific importance, many are also beautiful to look at through a telescope of any size. I will discuss various topics involving star clusters, with a number of examples from my research through the past 45 years

I will make some remarks on the current status of Yerkes Observatory, but the majority of my time will be spent discussing my research on star clusters.

About the Speaker:
Kyle Cudworth, former director of Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, WI, and Prof. Emeritus, The University of Chicago.

Cudworth’s interest in astronomy dates to learning a bit about constellations as a Boy Scout, and...

Chasing Shadows: Planning for and Imaging ISS Transits of the Sun and Moon – Jeffrey E. Shokler

How do you catch something travelling at 17,500 mph as it moves between you and a target that might be 92 million miles away (or maybe only 240,000 miles away)? Longtime MAS member and astrophotographer Jeffrey Shokler will show us how to plan for International Space Station transits of the Sun and Moon, and also about his recent experiences capturing images of those events. You’ll learn about on-line planning tools, strategies for the week before, day before, and day of in terms of positioning and set-up. Jeff will also share the approaches he has taken to both capturing and processing the transit data in order to create finished images of ISS transits.

About the Speaker:
Jeffrey E...

Observing Our Solar System – Martin Mika

The talk will outline the basics of our solar system: history, characteristics of the planets, how they move, and how to observe them with amateur telescopes. I will then also discuss some imaging techniques and touch on citizen science projects that can be undertaken by amateurs, with a few examples from some of the top planetary imagers around the world.

About the Speaker:
Martin Mika is a long time observer and astrophotographer and is the Observatory Director for the MAS.

The Milky Way and Its Dark Nebulae – Walter Piorkowski

This talk covers how the Milky Way is portrayed in charts and atlases, how to plan for and observe dark nebula and how these objects are cataloged. I will also show a selection of my 2×3 degree fields of the DN and discuss the “low extinction” windows in the Milky Way.

About the Speaker:
Walter Piorkowski is an amateur telescope and instrument maker. He is the former President and member of the board (14 years) of the Chicago Astronomical Society and Alder Planetarium (Chicago), Evening Courses instructor 1972 – 1980. He was Technical Support Adviser to Oberlin College’s CUREA program at Mt. Wilson observatory. Walter also was an Astro-Physics Mount Assembly Supervisor for 28 years.

(Re)Inventing the Flat Earth” – Peter Sobol

A survey of the history of ideas about the shape of the Earth in Western Civilization with a focus on the nineteenth century, which saw both the rise of the Warfare hypothesis (which encouraged secularists to misrepresent medieval ideas) and the rise of the modern Flat Earth movement, concluding with a glance at the present state of that movement.

About the Speaker:

Peter Sobol has taught the history of science at Indiana University, Oklahoma University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. in addition to standard history of science he has taught courses on the history of pseudoscience and the occult, hence his abiding if morbid interest in the vagaries of human thought.

UW Collaboration on the Proposed NASA CAESAR Mission

How did a 375 lb. iron weight cast by students at UW-Madison and UW-Platteville help the CAESAR Mission get off the ground and become one of two finalists in a NASA proposal? If selected, CAESAR, which stands for Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, would visit the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet and collect a small sample of its surface material. Led by Dr. Steve Squyres, principal investigator on NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, the device could grab at least a 100-gram sample from the nucleus of the comet and deliver it back to Earth in capsules to help demonstrate how the same materials contributed to early Earth.

The UW project entailed designing a shaped weight that had a similar radius at t...

Landscape Astrophotography
Presented by John Rummel

Have you been impressed (and envious) of the beautiful night landscape/sky shots you’ve seen floating around the internet? Do you wish that you could capture a breathtaking Milky Way vista above your favorite camping spot or mountain view? Odds are pretty good that you CAN do this, and that the camera that you own right now is capable of getting these shots. This presentation will show you how it’s done.

This talk will explore the photographic techniques necessary to capture thrilling and inspirational shots of the night sky with impressive terrestrial landscapes. The presentation will proceed in three parts:

1) Locating and choosing opportunities to shoot such scenes,
2) Camera settings, techniq...