Description: OoLALA was created to bring together scientists and engineers who are working to solve some of the deepest mysteries associated with life’s origins and distribution in the universe, as well as inspire others to join the effort. In this presentation, I will talk about the launch of this new initiative and discuss examples of OoLALA research being conducted right here in Madison, including my own on the chemical origins of life on Earth.

About the Speaker: Lena Vincent obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular & Cell Biology from California State University, Long Beach and was then awarded a research fellowship by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine at City of Hope Cancer Hospital to study the role of stem cells in cancer drug resistance. She then got a Master’s degree in Biology from California State University-Northridge, where she worked on “hacking” normally harmful bacteria to act a beneficial drug delivery systems instead. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD in Astrobiology and Prebiotic Chemistry. As a member of David Baum’s research group, she is using laboratory experiments to reconstruct the earliest stages in the origins and evolution of life.

Despite the likelihood of early habitability on both Earth and Mars, the geologic evolution of these two planets, and the rock record they preserve, is quite different. Plate tectonics on Earth played a central role in evolution of our biosphere, and yet has destroyed much of the early Earth rock record, creating great challenges for finding evidence for early life on Earth. Mars did not have Earth-style plate tectonics, but the evidence is clear that Mars was habitable very early in its history. Preservation of the early Mars geologic record is excellent, raising the possibility that it might contain evidence for the earliest life in the Solar System. Of course, geologic field work on Mars is a bit more difficult than on Earth. This talk will explore the geologic evolution of these two planets in their first billion years or so, highlighting evidence for habitability and life.

About the Speaker:
Clark M. Johnson Johnson is the Vilas Distinguished Professor of geoscience at the UW Madison. His specialties are Isotope Geochemistry, Astrobiology, Geochronology, & Petrology. His primary research interests lie in application of stable and radiogenic isotopes to study of ancient life and crust and mantle evolution. This includes topics ranging from astrobiology to the origin of igneous rocks and evolution of volcanic systems. He is also interested in mountain building and metamorphism, as well as low-temperature studies involving diageneis, sedimentary provenance, migration of ancient people, and geomicrobiology. He is the principle investigator for the Wisconsin Astrobiology Research Consortium.

How do you catch something travelling at 17,500 mph as it moves between you and a target that might be 92 million miles away (or maybe only 240,000 miles away)? Longtime MAS member and astrophotographer Jeffrey Shokler will show us how to plan for International Space Station transits of the Sun and Moon, and also about his recent experiences capturing images of those events. You’ll learn about on-line planning tools, strategies for the week before, day before, and day of in terms of positioning and set-up. Jeff will also share the approaches he has taken to both capturing and processing the transit data in order to create finished images of ISS transits.

About the Speaker:
Jeffrey E. Shokler is a current member, Vice President, and past President of the Madison Astronomical Society. An amateur astronomer for over 30 years, only five years ago Jeff took the dive into astrophotography – imaging with DSLR cameras and, most recently, with a dedicated CCD camera.

The talk will outline the basics of our solar system: history, characteristics of the planets, how they move, and how to observe them with amateur telescopes. I will then also discuss some imaging techniques and touch on citizen science projects that can be undertaken by amateurs, with a few examples from some of the top planetary imagers around the world.

About the Speaker:
Martin Mika is a long time observer and astrophotographer and is the Observatory Director for the MAS.

This talk covers how the Milky Way is portrayed in charts and atlases, how to plan for and observe dark nebula and how these objects are cataloged. I will also show a selection of my 2×3 degree fields of the DN and discuss the “low extinction” windows in the Milky Way.

About the Speaker:
Walter Piorkowski is an amateur telescope and instrument maker. He is the former President and member of the board (14 years) of the Chicago Astronomical Society and Alder Planetarium (Chicago), Evening Courses instructor 1972 – 1980. He was Technical Support Adviser to Oberlin College’s CUREA program at Mt. Wilson observatory. Walter also was an Astro-Physics Mount Assembly Supervisor for 28 years.

the occult, hence his abiding if morbid interest in the vagaries of human thought.

How did a 375 lb. iron weight cast by students at UW-Madison and UW-Platteville help the CAESAR Mission get off the ground and become one of two finalists in a NASA proposal? If selected, CAESAR, which stands for Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, would visit the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet and collect a small sample of its surface material. Led by Dr. Steve Squyres, principal investigator on NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, the device could grab at least a 100-gram sample from the nucleus of the comet and deliver it back to Earth in capsules to help demonstrate how the same materials contributed to early Earth.

The UW project entailed designing a shaped weight that had a similar radius at the bottom as the capsule and the same mass. The return to earth will be without a parachute and will have a very large acceleration when it contacts the earth. The acceleration needed to be measured to help design the internal components to be strong enough for that impact. UW Students cast the test article with mounts for the accelerometers and even conducted some test drops in the UW Foundry Laboratory. Their project was done in secrecy as the initial competition for the NASA project is fierce therefore we had to remain quiet about this until the recent announcement of the finalists.

More info on CAESAR here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAESAR_(spacecraft)

Cassini observations show that Saturn’s polar regions contain giant cyclones and unusual cloud configurations, including dark eyes that bring to mind the eyes of earthly hurricanes. Both on Earth and on Saturn, these eyes are regions of reduced cloud cover resulting from descending motions. Cassini images of the south polar regions also showed that circular cloud bands at the edge of the eye cast very long shadows. This led to the conclusion that there were towering convective storms reaching into the stratosphere, producing eyewalls that were casting shadows, much like hurricanes on earth, but on a vastly larger scale. I will show that this conclusion is completely wrong, that it is inconsistent with other observations, and that the shadows themselves can be explained by a very different phenomenon.

The trail begins with spectral observations by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Fitting these observations with model clouds failed to confirm the presence of optically thick eyewalls. But how can shadows be produced without an eyewall? The answer is surprisingly simple, as I will show qualitatively by a simple physical model, and quantitatively with Monte Carlo calculations that were needed to deal with light scattering at discontinuous boundaries. The physical model and Monte Carlo calculations also show that something called antishadows should also be produced on Saturn, and they are in fact observed, further confirming the explanation.

Dr. Larry Sromovsky is a Senior Scientist at the UW Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC). He was a co-investigator for Voyager Imaging Team support at SSEC through the Neptune encounter. He later served as principle investigator of the Galileo Net Flux Radiometer, which successfully probed Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995. Since 1993 his research has focused primarily on dynamics and cloud structures of outer planet atmospheres, making use of spectral and imaging observations by Cassini and New Horizons space missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA’s IRTF, Gemini, and the Keck ground-based observatories. Dr. Sromovsky received his Ph.D. in physics from the UW Madison in 1970.

Friday, December 14, 7pm
Space Place, 2300 S. Park St., Madison WI

MAS’s annual telescope clinic is a chance for people in the Madison area to get their questions answered about telescopes and binoculars. It may also help you with some ideas for the gift-giving season.

Do you have an old telescope that’s gathering dust because you don’t know how to use it?

Maybe it’s broken or missing a piece.

Maybe you tried it last year and just couldn’t get it to work.

Whatever the case, come on out and learn something. MAS members will be on hand to look your scope over with you, diagnose any issues, and teach you how to use it if necessary. If you’re not a scope owner yet, you may walk away with some ideas. We’ll have a few popular types of telescopes on hand to serve as models.

This is also our annual solstice party, so feel free to bring a tray of cookies or other delicious holiday snack to share. See you Friday at Space Place, 2300 S. Park St, Madison, WI.