admission free • monday, october 26, 2009 • 7:00 – 8:30 pm
Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Roda Stage)
2015 Addison St. Berkeley, CA 9470
No mystery is bigger than dark energy — the elusive force that makes up three-quarters of the Universe and is causing it to expand at an accelerating rate. KTVU Channel 2 health and science editor John Fowler will moderate a panel of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists who use phenomena such as exploding stars and gravitational lenses to explore the dark cosmos.
Saul Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project, which pioneered the use of precise observations of exploding stars to study the expansion of the Universe. His international team was one of two groups who independently discovered the amazing phenomenon known as dark energy, and he led a collaboration that designed a satellite to study the nature of this dark force. He is an astrophysicist at Berkeley Lab and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.
David Schlegel is a Berkeley Lab astrophysicist and the principal investigator of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest of four night-sky surveys being conducted in the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, known as SDSS-III. BOSS will generate a 3-D map of two million galaxies and quasars, using a specially built instrument outfitted with 1,000 optical fibers and mounted on the SDSS telescope in New Mexico.
Alexie Leauthaud is Chamberlain Fellow at Berkeley Lab. Her work probes dark matter in the Universe using a technique called gravitational lensing. When gravity from a massive object such as a cluster of galaxies warps space around it, this can distort our view of the light from an even more distant object. The scale and direction of this distortion allows astronomers to directly measure the properties of both dark matter and dark energy.
Guest of Honor: Sy Liebergot, Flight Controller of Mission Control during Apollo Program
Saturday Meeting/Conference
Conference Center, NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA
From Highway 101:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop sign just short of the NASA Ames gate, turn right into the conference center parking lot.
Friday Evening Social
6:00-8:30 PM Hot Dog Reception
Complimentary Hot Dogs (beef or tofu) and Beer at “Rancho Robinson”
424 Quartz Street; Redwood City, CA 94062 (directions)
Guest of Honor: Sy Liebergot, Flight Controller of Mission Control during Apollo program.
Sy will share some of his experiences with the filmmakers and actors of Apollo 13. He will also be available to autograph books and answer questions what it was like to be one of the central players on the mission control team–during good times and bad.
Saturday Meeting/Conference
Conference Center, NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA
From Highway 101:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop sign just short of the NASA Ames gate, turn right into the conference center parking lot.
8:00 Registration, Coffee, Donuts and other culinary delights.
8:55 Welcome and Announcements
9:00 Show and Tell
Share your favorite demonstration or teaching tip. Since new teachers and section members will be at this meeting, veterans are encouraged to dust off some of your oldies but goodies. If you have handouts, please bring 75 copies. PASCO will present their latest products. Time limit is 5 minutes person, or you risk the dreaded gong.
9:45 “Transit Tracks: NASA’s Kepler Mission”
Edna DeVore
SETI Institute; edevore@seti.org
Using a model of a planet transiting a star, students learn what a transit is, under what conditions a transit may be seen, and what effects a planet’s size and distance from its star have on transit behavior. Students interpret graphs of brightness vs time to deduce characteristics of a star-planet system. Demonstration, hand-outs, and NASA Kepler Mission poster provided.
10:00 Invited Speaker: “The Search for Habitable Worlds”
Natalie Batalha
NASA Ames and San Jose State University; nbatalha@science.sjsu.edu
NASA’s Kepler Mission has begun its 3.5-year quest for habitable planets like Earth in our galaxy. Natalie will define habitability from the perspective of the Kepler science team and describe how and where the spacecraft will look for worlds reminiscent of our own. She will give an overview of what to expect in the coming years as we work to understand whether Earth-like planets in our galaxy are common or rare.
11:00 Keynote Speaker: Sy Liebergot; EECOM Mission Flight Controller for Apollo
This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo program that culminated with landing on the moon. N Cal/Nev AAPT is pleased to commemorate mankind’s greatest adventures with a special appearance of Sy Liebergot.
Sy will speak about what it was like to be a Mission Flight Controller when a monster failure occurred during the Apollo 13 mission and landed squarely in his lap. He relates the general details of the explosion as they really happened.
Sy will also speak about Ethics in Engineering, using the real examples of the Apollo 1 pad fire disaster and the Shuttle Challenger and Columbia space disasters as subjects for this presentation. He describes how he and his fellow Apollo mission flight controllers approached their part in the successful lunar landings in an ethical manner. Sy uses real-life examples that convey in a way realistic and memorable enough to train engineers to deal with the heart-wrenching decisions some of them will have to make, particularly when they become managers. He examines how ethics (or the diminution of) played a role in the three tragedies of the U.S. space program: the Apollo 1 pad fire, the in-flight destruction of Shuttle Orbiters Challenger and Columbia.
Sy will be available for book signings after his talk.
12:30 Lunch at NASA Ames
Video replay of the LCROSS lunar impact from the Oct. 9 morning
1:30 Business Meeting
Look, only 30 minutes long!
2:00 Invited Talk: “Taking a Ride on the Wild Side: The Successful Stardust Sample Return Mission to Comet 81P/Wild 2”
Scott Sandford
NASA Ames, ssandford@mail.arc.nasa.gov
In 2006, NASA’s STARDUST Mission successfully returned samples from Comet 81P/Wild 2 to the Earth for study. The spacecraft was launched in 1999 and on January 2, 2004 it made a close flyby (236 km) of the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vildt Two”). During the flyby the spacecraft collected samples of dust from the coma of the comet. These samples were returned to Earth on January 15, 2006 after which they receiving a preliminary six month examination to establish the basic nature of the returned samples. The samples were then turned over to the NASA Curatorial Office where they have since been available to the general worldwide scientific community for continued study.
Scott is one of the original Co-Investigators and Science Team members of the STARDUST mission and was on the team that recovered the Sample Return Capsule from the Utah desert. He also escorted the capsule to NASA-Johnson Space Center, assisted with the removal of the samples from the capsule, and led the Preliminary Examination Team responsible for studying the organic materials in the returned samples. Samples have confirmed some of the ideas we had about comets and the origin of our Solar System, and completely overturned others.
3:00 End of program
3:00 Canceled “Shooting the Moon: Precision Tests of General Relativity with APOLLO
Charles HoyleHumboldt State University; charles.hoyle@humboldt.edu
It has been nearly forty years since the first reflectors were placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. Laser ranging to these mirrors provides high-precision tests of General Relativity, as well as a host of information about the lunar ephemeris. APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) recently obtained the first ranges with millimeter precision, representing an order-of-magnitude improvement over previous efforts. In the near future, this enhanced performance will provide unprecedented tests of the Strong Equivalence Principle, the best measure of the constancy of the gravitational constant, G, the most stringent limitations on predicted deviations of the gravitational inverse-square law, and information about the lunar environment. We discuss the techniques employed by APOLLO, initial results, and expected sensitivity.
Logistics
Registration
Fee is waived for first-time attendees and students! Everyone else pays only $20 — which includes lunch. A bargain at twice the price!
Registration can be completed on Saturday morning.
Lodging
Local hotels include (in no particular order):
Comfort Inn
Redwood City
1818 El Camino Real
Redwood City, CA 94063
800-444-6835
$80+/night
or
Days Inn Palo Alto-Stanford
4238 El Camino Real
Stanford, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$69+/night
or
Comfort Inn
Palo Alto Stanford University
3945 El Camino Rreal
Palo Alto, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$85+/night
or
DAmerica’s Best Inn
1090 El Camino Real
Redwood City, CA 94063
800-346-5357
$70+/night
or
Travelodge Palo Alto
3255 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA 94306
800-346-8357
$74+/night
or
Mermaid Inn
727 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-323-9481
$76+/night
Reflections on the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo Program
Thursday, October 8, 2009 • 7:30PM
Flight Controller Sy Liebergot
Sy Liebergot, a former NASA flight controller, was on the job for some of the most memorable moments in space exploration, including the Apollo 13 fuel cell explosion.
Mr. Liebergot will be available for book signings before and after the talk.
Sponsored by the Northern California and Nevada American Association of Physics Teachers, NASA Lunar Science Institute, and NASA Ames Research Institute
Westin SFO Hotel, Millbrae, California (near the San Francisco Airport)
Part of the 120th Anniversary Meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
One unit of Academic Credit available through San Francisco State U.
In this hands-on workshop, we will train educators to be “Galileo Ambassadors” for the International Year of Astronomy (2009). Teachers in grades 4 – 12 will learn how to do age-appropriate, inquiry-based activities in astronomy and physical science. After a brief introduction to Galileo’s life and work and the realms of astronomy, participants will explore:
A Private Universe: Student Reasoning and How to Help Students to Act Like Scientists
The Moons of Jupiter: Galileo’s Experiment Redone (and the Process of Science)
Understanding the Phases and Motions of the Moon
Making a Constellation Finder and Getting Oriented in the Night Sky
Measuring the Dark: Activities to Understand the Environmental Effects of Light Pollution
The Galileoscope: A Telescope for All Seasons and All Reasons
The Universe at Your Fingertips: Where to Find the Best Astronomy Activities in Print and on the Web
Participants will receive a free GalileoScope (a small telescope especially developed for easy public viewing during the International Year of Astronomy) and package of hands-on activities, background information, and resource guides that can be put to immediate use in the classroom. No background in astronomy will be assumed; both new and veteran teachers should gain new information and effective teaching techniques from the workshop.
Facilitators include:
Andrew Fraknoi (Chair, Astronomy Dept, Foothill College and the 2007 California Professor of the Year)
Dennis Schatz (VP, Pacific Science Center, Seattle; and the 2009 NSTA Faraday Award winner for science communication)
Constance Walker (Nat’l Optical Astronomy Observatories and Coordinator, Globe at Night)
Robert Sparks (Nat’l Optical Astronomy Observatories and Senior Trainer, Hands-on Optics Project)
Suzanne Gurton (Educational Projects Director, Astronomical Society of the Pacific)
(Sunday afternoon, participants will join with other meeting attendees to hear a series of non-technical talks on the search for extra-terrestrial life, with the father of SETI, Dr. Frank Drake, award-winning science popularizer Seth Shostak, planetary protection scientist Margaret Race, and one of the chief scientists for the Kepler Mission, looking for Earths around other stars.)
Cost
$39.95 per day ($78.90 for the weekend)
1 semester unit of academic credit: $100 (optional)
Saul Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology Project, which pioneered the use of precise observations of exploding stars to study the expansion of the Universe. His international team was one of two groups who independently discovered the amazing phenomenon known as dark energy, and he led a collaboration that designed a satellite to study the nature of this dark force. He is an astrophysicist at Berkeley Lab and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.
David Schlegel is a Berkeley Lab astrophysicist and the principal investigator of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest of four night-sky surveys being conducted in the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, known as SDSS-III. BOSS will generate a 3-D map of two million galaxies and quasars, using a specially built instrument outfitted with 1,000 optical fibers and mounted on the SDSS telescope in New Mexico.
Alexie Leauthaud is Chamberlain Fellow at Berkeley Lab. Her work probes dark matter in the Universe using a technique called gravitational lensing. When gravity from a massive object such as a cluster of galaxies warps space around it, this can distort our view of the light from an even more distant object. The scale and direction of this distortion allows astronomers to directly measure the properties of both dark matter and dark energy.
Complimentary Hot Dogs (beef or tofu) and Beer at “Rancho Robinson”
Edna DeVore
SETI Institute; edevore@seti.org
Natalie Batalha
NASA Ames and San Jose State University; nbatalha@science.sjsu.edu
This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo program that culminated with landing on the moon. N Cal/Nev AAPT is pleased to commemorate mankind’s greatest adventures with a special appearance of Sy Liebergot.
Scott Sandford
NASA Ames, ssandford@mail.arc.nasa.gov
Charles Hoyle
Sat, Sep. 12 and Sun, Sep. 13, 2009