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Table Mountain Star Party 2007
Observer's Challenge The Observer's Challenge was a huge success in it's inaugural year. This is definitely a program that we will be bringing back and expanding upon. The list that was used in 2007 will remain intact for future years. This will the first award in what is to become a collection of lists. If you did not complete the list, you can continue next year and still obtain the same pin that was issued in 2007. Different pins will become available as different lists are developed. The inaugural list is available here. Here is the list of individuals that completed the list in 2007. Speaker's Program Telescopes to Meteorites: Adventures in Africa Bob McGown In 2004 in the Canaries and 2005/2006 in Southern Africa, Robert McGown worked in Namibia as a visiting astronomer for two months. Afterward Robert and Dareth Murray traveled around South Africa and Namibia to meteoritical sites, observing and touring the great telescopes of Africa. This program contains some of the highlights of these journeys, discussing the southern sky, from termites to meteorites.
"The WorldWide Telescope, bringing the Universe to a PC near you" Jonathan Fay The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) project is designed to be an extensible learning and exploration environment which integrates hyperlinked rich media narrative with a seamless multiple survey virtual sky to enable guided and unguided exploration of the universe. WWT is a collaboration between Next Media Research (Principal Researcher and group manager Curtis Wong, Principal Research Software Design Engineer Jonathan Fay and Jina Suh Research Intern), Alex Szalay at Johns Hopkins University, Alyssa Goodman at Harvard's Center for Astrophysics, and Frank Summers at Space Telescope Science Institute. The vision for WWT began in 1993 Curtis' production of a CD-ROM called "John Dobson's Universe" which was never completed but featured a number of narrated tours within a virtual sky and included a talk that John Dobson recorded at Table Mountain in 1993. Curtis worked closely with Jim Gray and Alex Szalay in 2002 to develop the SkyServer Website to facilitate public access to the images and data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. SkyServer was always conceived of as the foundation towards building the World Wide Telescope. In early 2005 Curtis developed the collaborations with Harvard and STSCI and hired Jonathan Fay in late 2005 to utilize his experience in astronomical imaging and building interactive visualizations for TeraServer to architect and build the technology for WWT. "Explosions in the Night Sky" Jina Suh If astronomers predict one supernova in 50 years within our own Milky Way Galaxy, can you imagine how many supernovae are occurring during our lifetime across the galaxies within our universe? The list of supernovae in year 2006 alone counts up to 600 occurrences! While the length of our life-span seems so insignificant in the context of the age of the universe and the light sources in the night sky seem so static, some stars refuse to be buried in the background of countless stars and end their lives so violently as if to tickle our curiosity in figuring out what happened to them. Supernovae can sometimes outshine its host galaxy and the duration of their maximum brightness ranges from a week to a few months. This makes them prime targets for nightly observations. We will talk about what makes a star go "nova", what types of explosions are out there, and if we can observe any of them in tonight's sky.
"An Introduction to Binocular Astronomy" Gary Seronik Sky & Telescope contributing editor Gary Seronik has penned that magazine's binocular observing column since 1999 and his book, "Binocular Highlights: 99 Celestial Sights for Binocular Users," has just been published. Gary will be talking about the joys of binocular astronomy and offer tips on choosing and using asto binos. He will also reveal his picks of the night sky's 10 best binocular sights! A question and discussion period will follow Gary's presentation. "The Whole Universe " John Dobson John presented many of his ideas about cosmology to a very enthusiastic crowd.
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar The Museum of Flight is the largest aeronautical museum in the world. Dr. Dunbar covered all the highlights of the museum programs along with the educational possibilities. She also discussed her experiences on the five NASA Shuttle missions, including the first ever docking with the Russian Space Station Muir. |
