moon phases

All General Meetings occur on the fourth Saturday of the month, are open to the public and begin at 8:30PM. Following the meeting and lecture, the 26" telescope will be open for public viewing until 10:30 PM, weather conditions permitting. Note that the lectures will be held rain or shine.

Date	Speaker / Topic
Saturday, February 23, 8:30pm	Dr. Edward Belbruno, Innovative Orbital Design, Inc., Princeton University Low Energy Routes to the Moon and Beyond As a member of NASA’s JPL Dr. Belbruno’s work on finding low energy orbits to the Moon and other targets was used to rescue the Japanese spacecraft Hiten and send it to the Moon. He is author of Fly Me to the Moon, holds patents on routes in space and is an exhibiting artist.
Saturday, March 22, 8:30pm	Dr. Edgar Choueiri, Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University Plasma Propulsion and the Exploration of Space Dr. Choueiri will discuss why today’s chemical rockets are not feasible for future deep space missions. His work includes leading teams of researchers to develop new plasma rocket technology.
Saturday, April 26, 8:30pm	Voorhees High School Astronomy Club with special guests from the North Warren Regional High School Astronomy Club A Trip Through the Electromagnetic Spectrum: Wonderful Wavelengths from Space We are bathed in electromagnetic radiation of which a very small portion is visible to us. Tonight get the facts on the visible and invisible rays emanating from space.
Saturday, May 10th, 8:30pm	Ross Henry, NASA Optical Engineer The Final Hubble Servicing Mission and the Relative Navigation Sensors Project Ross grew up "in the shadow of the NJAA Observatory" and went to Hampton Public School and then Voorhees High School where he graduated in 1997. He has always had a passion for things astronomical and was the person that selected the images for the NJAA Solar System Scale Model Walk. Ross attended the University of Maryland at College Park, originally planning a major in engineering which ultimately changed to Astronomy and Physics. The close proximity of UMD to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center allowed Ross the opportunity to intern with NASA in 2000. In 2002 he graduated UMD and began working full time in the Optics Branch testing infrared filters. Ross is currently the lead optical engineer for a new shuttle payload project called the Relative Navigation Sensors (RNS). RNS will fly aboard the orbiter Atlantis during the next, and final, Hubble Servicing Mission (SM4) scheduled for October 2008. In addition to his engineer roles he has also been assigned a seat on the Mission Control team for RNS. His presentation will include not only the path he took to get where he is, but also an inside view of the HST servicing mission and a detailed look at the RNS project. Bring your children to see a role model they can relate to and bring yourselves to what is promising to be a truly enjoyable astronomical evening.
Saturday, May 24, 8:30pm	Al Witzgall NJAA member Tunguska - the 100th year Anniversary Mr. Witzgall will share with us the mysteries, myths and scientific discoveries that emerged from this cataclysmic event that occurred in a remote area of Siberia in 1908. Much is still unknown concerning its cause but it surely should serve as a warning that it could happen again.
Saturday, June 28, 8:30pm	Historical Icons of Astronomy - In Person! Aristotle (384-322 BC), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727) and Dr. Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974) will be the evening’s guest speakers. They will discuss their work in astronomy and tell us about significant moments in their lives. Some of them may answer questions from the audience.
Saturday, July 26, 8:30pm	Tom Kucharski NJAA member The Science and Technology of Palomar Mountain Observatory Tom will take us on a history tour of the construction of Palomar Observatory as well as some of its more noted discoveries. He’ll explain h ow the various instruments at the Observatory function today in the era of multi-observatory exploration, the new technologies being developed at Palomar, and some of its ongoing research.
Saturday, August 23, 8:30pm	Dr. Michael Stark Assistant Professor of Physics, Lafayette College Dr. Stark and his students in Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program have been investigating a binary star system in Cygnus through X-ray astronomy. The star pair consists of a typical star which is loosing material to its X-ray pulsar companion – a magnetized neutron star.
Saturday, September 27, 8:30pm	Dr. Greg Olsen Research Scientist and Entrepreneur Dr. Olsen was the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station. After 5 months of training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, he launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket on October 1, 2005 with Cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and Astronaut Bill McArthur (Expedition 12). He returned on October 11 after 150 orbits of the earth and logging 4 million miles of weightless travel during his10 days in space.
Saturday, October 25, 8:30pm	Dr. David W. Hogg Associate Professor, New York University, Dept of Physics Building the World’s Largest and Fastest Observatory out of Amateur Telescopes We have built a number of web-based and downloadable automated data calibration and analysis tools which permit anyone with reasonable digital astronomical data to calibrate it for inclusion in scientific projects, archives, and distributed virtual collections. We are currently using these tools to unite all digital amateur data in the world into an enormous observatory archive, and unite all active amateurs into a responsive, real-time, all-sky observatory. This observatory will have some capabilities that are unmatched by any professional observatory or even network of observatories presently in existence.
Saturday, November 22, 8:30pm	13th Annual NJAA Members’ Projects Night Our members have the floor to share their projects, observations and astrotrips.