AAA SKY – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode MJ interviews Alfredo Viegas, the new President of the AAA.  Alfredo details his vision for the future of the club, and highlights various new programs the club has for its members and New Yorkers in general.  MJ and Stanley discuss the AAA’s collaboration with other groups and tell us about the various upcoming club events.  And they develop a new title for all astronomers, with a bit of help from Mark Twain.

• Hayden Planetarium
• Astronomy on Tap
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
• American Museum of Natural History
• 2024 Total Eclipse
• How to photograph a solar eclipse
• Solar Eclipse Photography with Stan Honda
• Stan Honda Photography
• Stan Honda on AAA Eyepiece
• AAA Eyepiece: Astrophotography

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode Stanley interviews Alan and Aaron Sliski, a father-son team of professional observatory builders.  In a discussion full of anecdotes, Alan and Aaron give useful tips, advice, and discuss the various types of observatories and the reasons for building one, as well as the numerous pitfalls to avoid.  We welcome our new AAA President, Alfredo Viegas.  And MJ and Stanley give us a heads-up about the various upcoming Club observing events.

• Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston
• CKD 17
• ASCOM Alpaca
• Astro Haven
• Ash-Dome
• Backyard Observatories
• Center for Backyard Astrophysics
• NexDome
• SkyShed POD
• Home-Dome
• Pier-Tech
• Gemma Observatory

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode Stanley interviews Paige Godfrey, Senior Software Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin about life at Lockheed, her inspiring career path, the dichotomy between scientists and engineers and oh yes, the Orion Space Capsule and Artemis missions.  Brian says farewell, and MJ and Stanley speculate about life in a capsule and give us a heads-up about various astronomy events around NYC.

• Orion Spacecraft
• Slooh Online Telescope For Educators, Students, Astronomers & Space Enthusiasts
• Artemis-I

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

Welcome back to AAA SKY! In this episode we introduce MJ, the newest member of the AAA SKY team. Kat interviews Brian Levine, science educator, who shows us a novel way of modeling the distances between planets in the solar system. And Brian and Kat discuss Astronomy on Tap.

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this final episode of the season Yui Hasegawa, AAA member and high school student extraordinaire, tells Maggie how she came up with an idea for how to make stargazing vastly more accessible to the New York public, and how she made it a reality. By combining the respective resources of the AAA and the Brooklyn Public Library, Yui developed a library loaner program for telescopes which she hopes will serve as a model for cities and clubs worldwide. Hear our first all-women episode with Kat joining Maggie for the discussion.

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode Kat interviews Tony Hoffman, AAA Member and Citizen Scientist. Tony recounts his adventures photographing eclipses from airplanes in Africa, in northern Norway and wherever else the path of the sun and moon has taken him. He also gives tips on finding comets and even exoplanets. Kat and Stan discuss citizen science more generally and we have a new Listeners Challenge.

• PlanetHunters.org - Planet Hunters TESS
• TravelQuest International
• Tony Hoffman on Flickr
• aavso
• anecdata

Every 10 years, NASA engages a committee of scientists who develop a list of programs called the decadal survey, which they collectively recommend NASA should focus on. The new decadal survey has just come out. What is the number one priority they recommend NASA should do over the next 10 years?

Email us your answer at listenerchallenge@aaa.org by May 10th at 11:59pm. We'll select a random person with the correct answer and send them a AAASky hoodie!

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode Stanley interviews physicist and astronomer George Greenstein about Quantum Mechanics, how he became fascinated with the subject and why this highly successful theory still defies visualization and remains essentially strange to us.  It is precisely the unfamiliarity of the quantum world which George captures and explains in his book, Quantum Strangeness.

• Bell's theorem
• EPR paradox
• The Uncertainty principle
• Quantum entanglement
• Soho Photo Gallery

The White House just made a request to Congress for NASA's next budget, which is a record in terms of nominal dollars. How much is that budget, to the nearest billion?

Email us your answer at listenerchallenge@aaa.org by April 20th at 11:59pm. We'll select a random person with the correct answer and send them a AAASky hoodie!

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode we mix it up! Join AAA President Brian Berg and Executive Vice President Bart Fried as they debate the merits and demerits of public vs. private space launches. From Sean Connery to Elon Musk, from Apollo to Artemis, our adversaries discuss the operations, financing and legality of putting people and robots into space. And we introduce the newest member of our AAASKY team, co-host Kat Troche.

• Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)
• Outland
• Diamonds Are Forever

Matthias Schmitt told us that the greatest concentration of dark sky parks in the world is in one of the 50 US states. Which one did he say it was?

Hint: You can find the answer in last month's episode.

Email us your answer at listenerchallenge@aaa.org by March 10th at 11:59pm. We'll select a random person with the correct answer and send them a AAASky hoodie!

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode Maggie discovers the amazing personal and professional journey of astronomer Matthias Schmitt, Dark Sky Coordinator at Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah and an astronomy guide for Stargazing Zion. He is an avid eclipse chaser with observations in Oregon, Argentina, Oman, the Antarctic, and other locations.  Find out how joining an astronomy club, surrounding yourself with passion, and following your bliss, can change your life forever.  Read about Matthias’s most recent eclipse adventure to the Antarctic in an upcoming issue of the AAA newsletter, Eyepiece.

As Bart Fried described it, Jacob Campbell had a very, very large observatory in New York City in the 19th century. In which New York neighborhood was this observatory located?

Hint: You can find the answer in last month's episode.

Email us your answer at listenerchallenge@aaa.org by February 12th at 11:59pm. We'll select a random person with the correct answer and send them a AAASky hoodie!

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!

In this episode telescope historian Bart Fried recounts how New York City became the nation’s center for telescope-making in the early 19th century, and he discusses with Stan some impressive early observatories located in the city.  An episode chock full of anecdotes! And Maggie and Stan discuss Cassegrain telescopes and 19th century light pollution as well as their first telescope experiences.

• Henry Draper
• Henry Fitz
• Lewis Morris Rutherford
• John Byrne
• Fitz/Clark 12-in Refractor
• Stephen V. White

For which agency was Stan Honda working when he photographed the space shuttle launches?

Email us your answer at listenerchallenge@aaa.org by January 13th at 11:59pm. We'll select a random person with the correct answer and send them a AAASky hoodie!

Reach out to us at aaasky@aaa.org, even if just to say hi!