John Bentham gave an excellent talk on the history of cosmology, ending with a chart of the four fundamental forces of nature and the quarks that form hadrons.

Paul will give the April presentation, which springs off that chart and describes all known natural processes for forging the periodic table of elements which represent the nearly 5% of our universe with which we can see and interact.  The other 95% we have yet to develop any understanding.

Our April 12th meeting will be back at the “Party Palace,” our summer venue just northeast of Bigelow Gulch and Argonne.  Many club members are expected to be out of town for the total solar eclipse.  We are postponing the equipment swap meet until our May meeting, which will also be at the party palace.  Club members will get first dibs on all the equipment we are parceling out, after which it will go up on Craigslist, Marketplace, or other outlets.

We will be continuing our rekindling of the before-meeting BBQ tradition. Burgers and soft drinks will be provided. Members and guests are encouraged to bring side-dishes and desserts, let’s make this a potluck! BBQ begins at 6:30.

With the extra room and quiet location at the “Party Palace”, there is room to safely set up telescopes. Need help with learning to set up or use your new telescope? Want to do a bit of observing with experienced observers? Bring the ‘scope!

Google Maps link

The March topic will be multiverses, presented by John Benham, a Gonzaga astronomy and astrophysics professor for many years. Friday, March 8th 7:30 PM at the Providence Auditorium.

Board member and experienced observer Matt Wallin will give an introductory talk on observing this month. Also we’ll elect a new board for 2024. See you there!

In 2004 the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Rosetta mission to explore a comet.  It took ten years to reach it, in 2014, and a few more years before the analysis was complete and the photos were released to the public.  It’s been five years since then, and while many may have had an opportunity to peruse the images during the pandemic, many of us likely missed it. SAS President Paul Yost will take us to 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on January 12th, 2024. See the event page for more details!

Please join us on Friday as Dr. Noah Oblath of Pacific Northwest National Labs walks us through ADMX, the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment.

The axion is a hypothetical particle that solves both long-standing problems in nuclear physics and could be responsible for some or all of the dark matter of the universe. It is considered by many to be the most natural and elegant explanation, and there is strong support in the physics community for efforts to detect axion dark matter.

https://depts.washington.edu/admx/

This meeting is all about our favorite astronomical instrument – the telescope! Bring yours (if you have it) and set it up in the Planetarium lobby. Bring your projects and questions. No telescope required. See you Friday!

Our December speaker beams in remotely to SFCC this month. The topic is to-be-determined, but given that Ken works on a flying telescope I’d say we’re in for a treat. Ken Bower has worked on NASA astrophysics projects at Stanford University and the NASA Ames Research Center for more than 20 years. On the side, he delights in presenting scientific and engineering concepts to lay audiences of all ages.

This month at the SFCC Planetarium, local astronomer and educator John Benham takes on a journey of astro-hypotheticals: what if the Earth had two moons? What if our solar system were closer to the center of the Milky Way, or what if we lived in a binary star system? Get some answers on October 4th, 7:30pm!

This month at the SAS general meeting, Professor Matthew Geske of Gonzaga University tells us all about the universe’s “ghost particles”. Neutrinos are often referred to a “ghost particles” due to how difficult they are to detect. When massive stars reach the end of their lifespan, they often eject much of their mass outward in a stellar explosion called a supernova. All this and more on Friday, September 6th at Riverview Retirement Center!