First Friday, December 6, 2024, gathering at 7pm for 730pm December Members 2025 Officers Approval and General Meeting with two excellent talks by SBAU Members:  Farshad Barman, Ph.D., with "Simulations of Near Stars Orbiting Sagittarius A*" and Sean Kelley, Ph.D., SBCC professor, on "Wondrous White Dwarfs".

click on images for more details

Upcoming First Fridays: 
-January 3, 2025: Dr. Damian Christian of Cal State Northridge will discuss exoplanet research  techniques and discoveries.
-February 7, 2024: UCSB Postdoc Chami Amarasinghe will talk about trying to catch WIMPS in a mile deep pit mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.


Also, please check out some of our past meeting speakers and video links below:

First Friday, November 1, 2024, was a talk by Jennifer Ito, Ph.D. Westmont College, Asst. Prof of Physics on "Characterization & Deployment of the PolarBear - 2b Receiver to Measure the Cosmic Background Polarization" about radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert in Chile used to test the Big Bang Theory. 
Recorded Zoom: Youtube Jen Ito


First Friday, October 4, 2024, speaker was Liam Brennan, UCSB Ph.D. candidate.  He provided a dynamic exploration of particle physics for the groundbreaking work of the LDMX (Light Dark Matter Experiment) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration at CERN.  Recorded: SBAU Youtube: LIam Brennan talk

Some of his research

First Friday, September 6, 2024,  speaker Dr. Joe Masiero, research scientist at the IPAC research organization at Caltech, and the Deputy PI of the NEOWISE mission.  His talk was "Hunting for hazardous asteroids using infrared light"

See talk: Youtube-Hunting for hazardous asteroids
also see his "Tale of Asteroid Families"

First Friday August 2, 2024 talk by Nikolaus Volgenau, Ph.D., Las Cumbres Observatory Operations Scientist regarding "Ethanol in the Ether"  describing how simple molecules - including alcohol - form inside dark interstellar clouds, and how astronomers detect them.  His research has been in star formation.

recorded at our Youtube SB AstroUnit Channel

First Friday, July 5, 2024, was an SBAU Potluck at the Museum Broder facility (across the bridge). 
The evening was filled with good conversation, and tasty food. Event flyer: events/July Potluck 2024 Rev4.pdf


Our "Second Friday"* meeting, June 14, 2024, 7pm,  was a presentation by  our SBAU Outreach Coordinator, Chuck McPartlin. The talk was titled "Lunatic Express - an 8 billion MPH tour of moons".  Chuck has been with our club since 1988 and is a winner of the Las Cumbres Outreach Award (2012) from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. His shows are always informative and entertaining. See the recording: https://youtu.be/tPv579erqhI?si=3CNwER8GPTvpfyJr 


Our "First Friday" May 3, 2024 was Dr. Larry Martinez, on "Ensuring Outer Space Sustainability:  Space Debris and International Conflict". Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the California State University at Long Beach (joined 1988) (Ph.D. in Political Science, UCSB 1984). He also serves as a representative of the International Institute of Space Law at meetings of the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.  Recorded: https://youtu.be/72_cp5g4XQE?si=qVHQk5hN3UtkPu1t
 
https://www.larrymartinez.space/

Our "Second Friday!!!" April 12, 2024 speaker was Dr. David Kary, Citrus College, on "The Race to Find Life in the Universe".  Comparing the different ways astronomers have of looking for alien life.  Past Director of Astronomy Programs at our SBMNH and taught at UCSB.  Ph.D. in astrophysics from State University of New York at Stony Brook, where his research included how solar systems form.
Recording: https://youtu.be/9cKF48fvSfQ?si=q-y_fqPdGeTwXhSB

Astronomy-professor-wins-award

Our March 1, 2024 "First Friday" meeting was a remote presentation by "SkyMan" Bob Berman with the title "Where is the Universe".  Bob's book "Zoom" that received a NY Times rave review.

Recording of Bob's March presentation

Our First Friday, February 2, 2024 was a presentation by Tim Thompson, Mt. Wilson Trustee and docent since 1981, on the History of the Mt. Wilson Observatory.  Tim, Air Force vet, with a Physics, M.S. from CSU-LA, worked at JPL for 27 years in radioastronomy and Spitzer infrared.  He is also a tournament chess player! Recorded:
https://youtube/TimThompson-MtWilson


Our First Friday January 5, 2024 was a presentation via Zoom by Dr. Mario Motta, MD with the topic "Russel Porter, the founding of Stellafane 100 years ago, and the birth of amatuer astronomy and telescope making" and his subsequent recruitment to help design and build the 200 inch Hale telescope.  See the recording here: https://youtube/Mario-Motta-Stellafane-Porter

https://stellafane.org/

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Past Meetings 2023

Our First Friday December 1, 2023 First Friday meeting was an election of our the club's 2024 leaders and then presentatinos from three members about their favorite topics.  David Feinberg talked about meteorites and tektites, Mike Hardwick discussed astrophotography, and Rex Meach talked on "Celestrial Navigation Oversimplified". Recorded: https://youtube/December-Member-talks


Our First Friday meeting November 3, 2023 was a presentation by Matt Povich, Ph.D., an Astronomy  professor at Cal Poly Pomona.  His talk title is:  "Taking the Pulse of the Milky Way with Citizen Science." He described his work mapping star birth in our Milky Way Galaxy using multiwavelength surveys across X-rays, visible light, infrared and radio. Recorded: youtube/SBAstroUnit/MattPovich

Matt Povich Cal Poly Ponoma bio

Our First Friday meeting October 6, 2023 did not go as planned due to communication problems.  But we found a very interesting Youtube video of our scheduled speaker, Bob Berman, to play for our Farrand Hall & Zoom audience.  He is an astronomer, and prolific science writer for Astronomy.com, Almanac.com, and several books.  He will join us live at a later date.
 
 amazon.com/stores/author/B000AP9C6S

Our First Friday meeting September 1, 2023 was John Callas, Ph.D. Brown Univ, 1987, with the topic:  "The UNIVERSE is so LARGE & so DARK - Living within the 95% of DARK MATTER & DARK ENERGY".  Works at JPL-NASA on advanced spacecraft propulsion, was Project Manager Mars Opportunity, plus astrophysics instrumentation.  Organized May 2023 NASA Fundamental Physics Workshop here in SB.

see: https://youtube/John-Callas-Dark-Matter

Our First Friday meeting August 4, 2023, was a presentation by Peter Love on the "James Webb Space Telescope: A Window Into the Universe’s Past".  Peter was Systems engineer for JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument Detector at the Raytheon Hyperspectral Module Program. 

see:  https://youtube/Peter-Love-re-James-Webb

Our First Friday meeting July 7, 2023 had a presentation by Sahil Hegde of UCLA, a member of the Furlanetto Group looking at the early universe "Cosmic Dawn", Pop III low "metal" monster stars.

Recorded: https://youtube/Sahil-Hegde-Cosmic-Dawn

First Friday meeting June 2, 2023, was a presentation by Dr. Robert "Ski" Antonucci, UCSB Professor of Astrophysics and Cosmology on "Supermassive Black Holes and Quasar behavior - still Mysterious to us" [click - Youtube recording].  Also, see these articles:
 -"Quasars still defy explanation" by Robert Antonucci
-"An Identity Problem" UCSB - The Current
-Unified model of an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN)

Research of Robert Antonucci into AGN's

First Friday meeting May 5, 2023, was a presentation by Joseph Farah, an award winning graduate student at UCSB, also working with the Las Cumbres Observatory.  He is listed as the lead author of the paper describing the imaging of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way using the Event Horizon Telescope.

See more about Mr. Farah here: https://josephfarah.co/#  and the imaging here: https://lco.global/news/Milky-Way-black-hole 
Meeting recorded:  SBAU Youtube...skip first 20 minutes

First Friday meeting April 7, 2023, presentation by UCLA Post-Doc Daniel Gilman, reaching us via Zoom from Toronto, Canada.  He will cover the latest information on Dark Energy and Dark Matter detected using Gravitational Lensing. 
Meeting recorded:  SBAU Channel Daniel Gilman


First Friday meeting March 3, 2023, 730pm, had a presentation by Rafael Stavros Cottom, the Lead Astronomy Programs Presenter at the SBMNH, & President, SBCC Astronomy Club, reviewing research on the first generation of stars of a specific group of metal-poor stars. Meeting was not recorded.


First Friday Meeting, February 3, 2023, presenter was Joseph "Joe" Bassi, Phd, Fellow Royal Astronomical Society, informing us about "Spaceweather".  Meeting was not recorded.


First Friday Meeting, January 6, 2023, presenter was our Outreach Coordinator, Chuck McPartlin, showing how asteroid occultations provide information for NASA missions.  See the meeting and talk here:
https://youtu.be/svPnhShmeXE





MANY MORE YouTube "SBAstroUnit" meeting videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU0r4RxzoyT_pwNcfN5aJsA/videos



Listing of some of our past speakers since 2008