Feb 21, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
scheduled
In this talk Dr. Gaston Gutierrez will describe the upgrade to the 4-meter Blanco telescope for the Dark Energy Survey experiment (DES), and the upgrade to the 4-meter Mayall telescope for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaboration (DESI). These telescopes are respectively located in La Serena, Chile, and in Kitt Peak, Arizona. He will also describe the scientific goals of both the DES and the DESI collaborations."
Dr. Gutierrez has been at Fermilab since 1983. He worked as a High Energy physicist for half of his career, doing things like building the D0 fiber tracker and making precise measurements of the mass of the top quark. About fifteen years ago he became very interested in the mysterious “Dark Energy” and switch fields to Cosmology. Since then he has participated in the upgrades to the Blanco and the Mayall 4-meter telescopes. His main interest in Cosmology is in the evolution of the Large Scale Structure in the Universe in general, and Weak Gravitational Lensing in particular.”
Apr 18, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
scheduled
The Europa Clipper is NASA's largest-ever planetary spacecraft & it is on its way to the Jupiter system. Arriving in April 2030, the goal of this mission is to study Europa, one of the Galilean moons & one of our solar system's most interesting ocean worlds. The main goal will be to characterize whether this moon might host conditions that are suitable for life. Michelle Nichols from the Adler Planetarium will give an overview of this exciting mission and what scientists are hoping to learn from it.
The presentation will be followed by an LCAS business meeting starting about 8:30PM. Weather permitting, LCAS Members will show Attendees the Night Sky through powerful telescopes.
May 16, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
scheduled
The May meeting of the Lake County Astronomical Society will be Friday, May 16th at the Volo Bog Visitor's Center. Our guest speaker will be Larry Bartoszek who was a researcher at FermiLab, designer of the Space Elevator and now president of Bartoszek Engineering. His talk will cover the basic concepts of how to provide power to the Climbers on the Space Elevator as conceived by Bradley Edwards and Eric Westling in their book “The Space Elevator—a revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System.” Once we have a space elevator, the cost to get to orbit should plummet and the colonization of space can begin. Larry Bartoszek has done original design work on the first 900 kg construction climber for the space elevator, the 20 tonne first commercial climber, and a possible 200 tonne climber based on the 20 tonne climber technology. Climbers are electric vehicles that roll straight up the elevator ribbon and out of Earth’s atmosphere. Larry will show how the space elevator can outperform rockets in boosting payloads up to geostationary orbit and beyond. Please note the start time will be 7 PM. Public invited. Please join us.
Jun 20, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
scheduled
The Speaker for this months meeting of the Lake County Astronomical Society is Jim Hopkins, retired Professor of Astronomy at Joliet Junior College with a Masters Degree from Eastern Illinois University. Jim was also a teacher at Naperville High School and at the College of DuPage. He has given over 100 presentations on Astronomy over the years in the Chicagoland area. In a world where you can be anything. be kind...The talk will cover the nature of impactors, the creation of craters, the nature of the evidence that supports the impact theory, and mass extinctions related to cratering.
Afterwards, weather permitting, Members of LCAS will show the night sky to guests through their powerful telescopes.
