Speakers
William I. Hartkopf, Ph.D.- Keynote Speaker
Dr. Hartkopf is a retired Naval Observatory Astronomer. He will summarize the highlights of the 195-year history of the US Naval Observatory and revisit the 125th anniversary celebration of their 26-inch, Alvin-Clark refractor and the important data that it has provided to the field of Astronomy and to the Defense Department.
Bill Engberg and John Reed - Restoration and Updating of a 24-inch Dobsonian Telescope
Bill Engberg and his Father built a 24-inch Dobsonian Telescope that lay fallow for a number of years. After his retirement from the Air Force, Bill collaborated with John Reed to restore this telescope and update it to a GoTo Instrument.
Darcy Howard and Carl Freyaldenhoven - Preparing the Public for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse.
Darcy and Carl traveled throughout Arkansas and nearby locations in Texas, Missouri and Mississippi to educate people about the Total Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024. The presented the science of solar eclipses, what to look for and how to observe them safely. They also taught people how to run safe and educational eclipse observing events.
Linda Spilker, Ph.D.- Voyager Project Scientist
Voyager: Exploring where no one has gone before
Forty-seven years after launch, two Voyager spacecraft are exploring interstellar space, directly sampling the material and radiation between the stars and providing unique in situ measurements at distances of 15.5 billion miles (VGR 1) and 13 billion miles (VGR 2) from our Sun. The Voyagers continue to provide surprises, and their discoveries have fundamentally altered many of our ideas about our solar system and beyond. Voyager Project Scientist Linda Spilker will highlight some of Voyager’s major discoveries.
Dr. Linda Spilker is currently the Voyager Project Scientist as well as a Fellow and Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Previously, she was the Cassini Project scientist and a Co-Investigator on the Cassini composite infrared spectrometer team. Since joining JPL 48 years ago, she worked on the Voyager project through six planetary flybys, the Cassini project from mission inception through the end of mission, future mission concepts including Discovery and New Frontiers Enceladus missions, mentored numerous postdocs, graduate students and undergraduate students, and conducted independent research on the origin and evolution of planetary ring systems. She received her B.A. in physics from Cal State Fullerton, her M.S. in physics from Cal State Los Angeles, and her PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA.
Brian Fields, Ph.D. - Professor of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
What happens if a Supernova explodes near the Earth.
Bruce McMath - Variable Star Observing - Past, Present, and Future
Bruce is a long-time variable star dilatant and member of the AAVSO
Bruce McMath - The RRT and Exoplanet Transits
The Robotic Research Telescope, a collaborative effort between the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society and Arkansas Tech University located at the River Ridge Observatory, is a 17" instrument specializing in capturing exoplanet transits.
Eliott Neel - Building a Russell Porter Garden Scope
Eliott will be speaking on the design and construction of a Russell Porter Garden Scope. Eliott is an architect with an artistic bent so his project is as much art as it is science. Porter was the reason for the Stellafane Starparty and was a pioneer in telescope design. In addition to his talk Eliott will be showing the instrument he constructed.