Star Party Speaker give their talks on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon
Collimation Clinic for Newtonian and SCT Telescopes –John Raymond (Richmond Club)
(Friday)
Collimation Clinic is a demonstration of basic Newtonian collimation with sight tube, Cheshire , and laser collimator.
Afterwards , in field collimation help with Newtonian and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes as requested.
John Raymond is past president of the Richmond Astronomical Society and author of the Mysteries of Lyra
Mysteries of Lyra – Richmond Astronomical Society
A faster than the speed of light tour of our Solar System – Scott Jackson
In my never ending frustration to please children and adults alike while attempting to “entertain” them in the planetarium, a massive project was undertaken to tour the entire solar system –even out to the Oort cloud and the heliopause (now what is that?) using our digital planetarium. Since we are not relegated to staying on earth using our planetarium, I elected to travel very quickly through all the major bodies that make up the greater environment of our home. Very quickly here means traveling greater than the speed of light. I promise that you won’t gain weight or get shorter or not get older (all this due to special relativity). So in our haste to break the laws of physics we will travel to the Oort cloud and back within about a 40 minute period of time. There are lots of cool motions (flying by the sun without getting burned) to keep the littlest of the kids (and some adults) fully entertained. Along the way we will learn about some astronomy stuff that most amateurs already know — but hey — this is a program for the general public.
Please come out to be entertained by this show.
Introduction to EAA – Doug Lively and Michael Keefe
(Saturday)
Invisible Universe – Steven Bellavia
(Thursday)
A large portion of the universe cannot be seen by the human eye, or even very large optical telescopes.
But Radio and Gravity Waves can be detected, helping us unravel the mysteries of space and time
This is a talk about exloring the universe in wavelengths well beyond the human eye, and the latest non-visible schemes, using gravity waves, as predicted by Albert Einstein but not proven until recently.
Steven Bellavia is an amateur astronomer and telescope maker. He is an aerospace engineer who worked for Grumman Aerospace with the Thermodynamics Group of the Space Division. He had a key role in developing a nuclear rocket engine, and performed the analysis, design and fabrication of the micro-gravity liquid droplet radiator that flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-029.