Melinda Soares-Furtado will talk about the observational signatures that are left behind when stars consume their own close-orbiting planetary companions, the ways in which we are searching for these events, and why finding cannibal stars in open clusters is of critical importance to our understanding of stellar and planetary astrophysics.

Dr. Melinda Soares-Furtado is a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has a BS in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Science from Princeton University. She works on detecting and characterizing stars in open clusters that have anomalous characteristics brought about by the ingestion of close-orbiting substellar companions.

This MAS meeting will be held online via Zoom.

Cosmology tells us that roughly only 5% of matter in the universe is made up of normal atoms and matter that we’re familiar with. However, when astronomers try to take account of the matter they can see inside of galaxies, they find something puzzling – some of it is missing! So, where could it possibly be? It turns out there’s a good chance that it’s not inside of galaxies at all, but completely outside of them in a hard-to-observe gaseous state. When there are thousands of galaxies clustered together, this gaseous medium gets hot enough for us to see it at X-ray wavelengths, but in smaller groups of galaxies (typically 10s of galaxies), it is still difficult to observe and account for. While we can’t see the gas directly, we can see the effect it has on galaxies embedded in it. For example, high energy jets formed by active supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are typically very narrow and straight. However, when in galaxy groups, we can see the jets being bent back as the galaxy moves through the gas, similar to how a car’s antenna bends back when you’re driving on the highway. For my thesis work, I am using these peculiar bent jets to learn just how much gas exists in galaxy groups and how it can affect how these galaxies evolve.

Melissa is a 4th year graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working with Eric Wilcots. Most of her research involves observations of galaxies at radio wavelengths to learn about their environments and how they change and evolve over time. On top of research, She’s also very passionate about teaching, mentoring, and outreach. She thinks it’s important to share science with as many people as possible to help improve science literacy (also because space is cool and she wants to make sure everybody knows it). Every now and then, you can hear her talking about fun astronomy discoveries on Radio Astronomy, a weekly short segment on WORT 89.9FM that airs on Tuesdays! Outside of grad school, she enjoys kayaking, video games, and going on adventures with her 10 year old lab!

The light collected by a camera consists of multiple components: The direct component of light that traveled directly from a surface in the scene to the camera and many multibounce components made up of light that has been reflected more than once within the scene. The direct component carries the information about things in the line of sight of the camera. It is used to form a normal camera image. The multibounce components contain additional information about other objects that the light reflected off on it’s path from a light source to the camera.

Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) Imaging systems reconstruct images of scenes using this indirect light from reflections off a diffuse relay surface, like a wall or the ground. After illuminating the relay surface with short pulses, the returning light is detected with single photon cameras that have enough time resolution to resolve the motion of light. We thereby capture video of the light propagation in the visible scene and reconstruct images of hidden parts of the scene.

This method has potential practical applications for imaging into caves, assessment of infrastructure like buildings from the air, scouting of caves for potential human habitation on moon and mars, collision avoidance, robot navigation and path planning, as well as disaster response, military reconnaissance , and law enforcement.

Andreas Velten is Assistant Professor at the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics and the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and directs the Computational Optics Group. He obtained his PhD with Prof. Jean-Claude Diels in Physics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and was a postdoctoral associate of the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. He has included in the MIT TR35 list of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35 and is a senior member of NAI, OSA, and SPIE as well as a member of Sigma Xi. He is co-Founder of Onlume, a company that develops surgical imaging systems, and Ubicept, a company developing single photon imaging solutions.

The zoom link to the meeting will be sent to members a few days prior to the event.

Science is heavy! Teasing out faint signals from the most remote and extreme places in the universe is challenging scientifically, and technically. It takes tons (literally) of data storage, and a lot of computational capacity to collect and sift through the data looking for interesting signals. Steve Barnet has worked on the computing and data collection systems for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory for over 15 years. In this talk, he will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the computing systems powering one of the most unique instruments ever built.

Steve Barnet earned his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1994. After a brief stint with Cray Research, he worked for several academic and research units at UW-Madison before landing at the IceCube project. There he manages the talented team that provides the infrastructure powering the IceCube Scientific Collaboration.

Due to the continuing high levels of infection and hospitalization rate due to COVID-19, MAS HAS MADE THE DECISION TO REMAIN VIRTUAL FOR OUR JANUARY MEETING. The meeting will be hosted with Zoom as before. MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH LINKS AND INSTRUCTIONS a day or so before the event. Again, this month we are opening the virtual meeting up to our web followers who may want to join in. If you would like to attend the MAS virtual meeting, send an email to madisonastro.info@gmail.com by noon Friday, January 14th to let us know of your interest. We will email you the instructions and link by 3pm that day which will get you into the meeting by 7:30 on Friday evening.

If it’s December, it’s time for the telescope clinic. Gift-giving season means you may be on the giving or receiving end of a telescope gift soon. Let’s make sure you can avoid the most common mistakes when purchasing a telescope.

We’ve been doing this event for years, usually live. This meeting will be our second consecutive virtual version of the telescope clinic. We’ll do our best to share the critical info with you, and then allow plenty of time for questions and answers.

We hope you can join us!

Whether you are speaking to a third grader or an adult, understanding science can be easy when the ideas are communicated effectively. I will give a brief history of my time as outreach specialist with the UW Space Place and explain why I think outreach is a vital part of the UW’s mission. I will then list the top ten things I have learned over the past 20+ years about presenting science to the general public.

Kay Kriewald has a background in teaching and tutoring elementary and middle school students in science and math. She has been an outreach specialist at Space Place since 1995. She hopes to retire soon but she is still having too much fun.

Due to the continuing high levels of infection and hospitalization rate due to COVID-19 Delta, MAS HAS MADE THE DECISION TO STAY VIRTUAL FOR OUR NOVEMBER MEETING. The November meeting will be hosted with Zoom as before. MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH LINKS AND INSTRUCTIONS a day or so before the event. Again this month we are opening the virtual meeting up to our web followers who may want to join in. If you would like to attend the MAS virtual meeting, send an email to madisonastro.info@gmail.com by noon Friday, November 12 to let us know of your interest. We will email you the instructions and link by 3pm that day which will get you into the meeting by 7:30 on Friday evening.

In this talk, I discuss my light pollution atlas, light pollution modeling, and recent trends in light pollution across the world. A light pollution atlas (artificial night sky brightness) is distinct from the maps that show the lights as they would appear from orbit in space looking down. These space-view maps are the input data to a model of the propagation, extinction, and scattering of light in the atmosphere. The output of the model is the estimated artificial light pollution at zenith. I will also use the light pollution model to understand 1) the role of atmospheric aerosols (fine solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the air) on light pollution and 2) the role of the direction of light propagation from light sources on light pollution (nearly horizontal light beams are the most harmful).

David Lorenz is an amateur astronomer with a professional background in the atmospheric sciences. His favorite astronomical target is the milky way from dark skies with naked-eye and binoculars. In the past, when seeking out dark skies, he relied heavily on the original global light pollution atlas created by Cinzano et al in 2001. Later on, when he grew impatient with the lack of updates to the atlas, he decided to repeat the calculations of Cinzano on more recent satellite data. He has continued to update the atlas through the present. He currently works at the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Due to the accelerating infection and hospitalization rate due to COVID-19 Delta, MAS HAS MADE THE DECISION TO STAY VIRTUAL FOR OUR OCTOBER MEETING. The October meeting will be hosted with Zoom as before. MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH LINKS AND INSTRUCTIONS a day or so before the event. Again this month we are opening the virtual meeting up to our web followers who may want to join in. If you would like to attend the MAS virtual meeting, send an email to madisonastro.info@gmail.com by noon Friday, Oct. 8 to let us know of your interest. We will email you the instructions and link by 3pm that day which will get you into the meeting by 7:30 on Friday evening.

Our nearest star – the Sun – offers an ever-changing variety of astronomical phenomena, including prominences, sunspots, filaments, and prominences, that reveal the sun’s weather and can be observed from earth. As we come out of the solar minimum, solar activity is already rapidly ramping up with sunspots and solar storms. In this talk, I will give an introduction to solar imaging, some of the equipment and techniques involved used by amateur astronomers, with some examples from my own work.

Bob Hamers is a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison with a longstanding interest in space and astronomy. At UW his research centers on using light and electrons to characterize solids and nanomaterials. As an amateur astronomer, he discovered MAS about 5 years ago and enjoys both deep-sky imaging and solar imaging.

Due to the accelerating infection and hospitalization rate due to COVID-19 Delta, MAS HAS MADE THE DECISION TO STAY VIRTUAL FOR OUR SEPTEMBER MEETING. The September meeting will be hosted with Zoom as before. MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH LINKS AND INSTRUCTIONS a day or so before the event. Again this month we are opening the virtual meeting up to our web followers who may want to join in. If you would like to attend the MAS virtual meeting, send an email to madisonastro.info@gmail.com by noon Friday, Sept. 10 to let us know of your interest. We will email you the instructions and link by 3pm that day which will get you into the meeting by 7:30 on Friday evening.

Stories of the Milky Way casting a shadow are common but details are elusive. Whenever someone wants to brag about the great dark skies they experienced they often trot out the “it was so dark you could see your shadow by the light of the Milky Way” line. Asking follow-up questions results in repetition and hand-waving.

But could it be true? Is it possible? After all, the Milky Way is large, diffuse, low contrast, and faint. The sun and moon cast shadows. Bright point sources cast shadows. It’s even said that Venus or Jupiter can cast shadows. Can the huge Milky Way, spread across 90 degrees of sky (or more), cast a shadow? In this talk, we move beyond hearsay, legend, and myth and attempt to nail down some facts and experimental results. I have been working on this talk in some form for more than 10 years and I’ve finally got some photographic evidence to show. Don’t miss this one. It may change the way you think about dark skies!

John Rummel is a long-time member and former president of the MAS. He has put an embarrassing number of miles on his car in pursuit of dark skies in the contiguous United States.

Due to the accelerating infection and hospitalization rate due to COVID-19 Delta, MAS HAS MADE THE DECISION TO STAY VIRTUAL FOR OUR AUGUST MEETING. The August meeting will either be hosted with Zoom as before, or streamed via our Youtube channel. MEMBERS WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL WITH LINKS AND INSTRUCTIONS a day or so before the event. Again this month we are opening the virtual meeting up to our web followers who may want to join in. If you would like to attend the MAS virtual meeting, send an email to madisonastro.info@gmail.com by noon Friday, August 13 to let us know of your interest. We will email you the instructions and link by 3pm that day which will get you into the meeting by 7:30 on Friday evening.

View the MAS YouTube channel by following this link.