Past Events from 2021

For photos of all past events, see our Flickr Page. For lecture recordings, see our YouTube Page.

To learn more about each event this year (including abstracts, titles, etc.), click on the event links below.

Monday, January 11, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Rachel Bezanson, Igor Andreoni
Attendees: 90
Great presentations!

Friday, January 29, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - An Insider's Look Behind Science Headlines
Lecturer: Sarah Blunt
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Amruta Jaodand, Tony Rodriguez
Attendees: 50
Excellent talk on an unusual topic.

Monday, February 8, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Jessica Werk, Zach Hafen
Attendees: 90
Event coincided with the KITP Program "Fundamentals of Gaseous Halos" that Cameron is leading.
Speakers were selected from participants in this program.
Great presentations!

Thursday, February 25, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - Searching for the Violent Births and Deaths of Stars with Night-Vision Goggles
Lecturer: Kishalay De
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Ryan Rubenzahl, Nikita Kamraj, Nicole Wallack, Eva Scheller
Attendees: 80
Great talk by Kishalay. We experimented by having a Space Engine demonstration by Ryan and Nikita beforehand.
It seemed to work pretty well, but maybe a little low on details of the target objects.

Monday, March 15, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Max Gronke, Laura-May Abron
Attendees: 80

Friday, March 26, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - Astronomy on the Cusp: A Subject Driven by Technology (Not Ideas)
Lecturer: Shri Kulkarni
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Ilaria Caiazzo, Julie Inglis
Attendees: 100
Shri gave a good talk, which spurred some interesting discussion afterwards.
Perhaps it's worthwhile to do more of these didactive / philosophical talks rather than just all research-based.
One thought is to do one on the scientific method, or the planetary taxonomy (re: Pluto), or even one on pseudoscience.

Monday, March 29, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap, Mandarin
MC: Yuguang Chen, Yuping Huang
Speakers (2): Cheng Zhang, Quanzhi Ye
Attendees: 8000
This was definitely a lot of work, but it seems to have paid off.
We've been planning this event for a few months. The main challenge was getting the word out to the proper audience.
Since most Chinese-speakers in the world are in China, we wanted to be able to advertise to them. Twitter, Facebook,
and Youtube are all blocked in China, so we created accounts on Bilibili (video sharing), Weibo (Twitter-like), and Wechat (Whatsapp-like).
This was sort of a pain, because we needed to get authorization forms signed by people high up in the administration, but Allison Benter,
the Director of Digital Communications at the Office of Strategic Communications was extremely helpful in signing documents for us.
In the end, we now have "official" Caltech Astro accounts on those websites. Yuguang advertised on them and got a lot of views for us.
We purchased a premium paid account on restream.io, which allows us to duplicate a stream to multiple locations, so we were able to
stream to both Youtube as well as Weibo. While I was reasonably pleased that we had a typical turnout of 75 people to our YouTube
broadcast, we had 7900 attendees to our Weibo broadcast! I'm sort of blown away. The talks went well, as did the pub trivia using
mentimeter (which even works with Chinese characters). The main feedback we received from the speakers is that we should encourage
more questions from the audience, and that they wanted more live-feedback from the audience during the presentation.
We've decided that we're going to start hosting these events 4x/year, so we're already planning our next event in June.

Friday, April 16, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - Endless Hunt for Black Holes​​
Lecturer: Wenbin Lu
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Nikita Kamraj, Jessie Christiansen
Attendees: 90
Tonight was the first night using restream to live-stream an event to both YouTube Live
as well as Facebook Live, and it mostly worked OK. I had to setup the custom rtmp to point
to the Facebook event page for the lecture, then start streaming to it, then "Go Live" on the Facebook
side of things. For YouTube, once you "go live" in the restream side, it takes about 5 seconds for the
stream to actually start, so start YouTube first, then start Facebook. It's a bit tricky to manage comments
and questions from both the Facebook side as well as the YouTube side, but I managed.
This could definitely be an area where it would be helpful to have a volunteer to start/stop the stream
and manage all the comments, but it was feasible. In general, I think it went pretty well overall.
I've just got to get the camera settings on my Logitech webcam to work better, since by default it
makes me look pink!

Monday, April 26, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Rebecca Larson, Evan Nunez
Attendees: 90
Good event with interaction on both FB Live and YouTube Live.

Monday, May 10, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Sabrina Pakzad, Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay
Attendees: 110
Slightly shorter than usual, but it was still a good event. More Facebook Live attendees (25%).

Monday, May 17, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online, Espanol
MC: Tony Rodriguez, Benjamin Idini
Speakers (2): Lluis Mas Ribas, Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi
Attendees: 30
This event was another experiment. While it was our third spanish-language event we've hosted,
it was the first one we've done entirely virtually. As always, the biggest challenge with these
foreign language events is advertising to the target audience. In preparation for this event, I pulled
out all of the stops and contacted everyone I could think to: Andrés Plazas-Malagon (Princeton),
Jorge Moreno (Pomona), Melva Alvarez (PCC), ESO, Jeff Rich (Carnegie), Marja Seidel,
Nico Garavito and Raphael Hviding (Arizona/Astrocharlas), Nicolas Tejos (Valparaíso),
Mitch Aiken (CTLO), Marlene Moncada (Caltech Diversity Office diversity@caltech.edu),
Jackie Faherty (AMNH). Furthermore, our hosts contacted scientists at UNAM (Mexico City)
and Chilean collaborators. Unfortunately, we only had 25-30 people throughout the event.
All of our participation was over YouTube, with 75% of the time the Facebook Live stream
being empty. To be honest, it was a bit of a bummer because we'd put so much time into it, but
hopefully word will spread, and we can find an audience for our subsequent events.
Tony and Benjamin did a great job hosting for their first time, and Daniella and Lluis gave
good talks. A slight room for improvement could have been more energy by people and less
silence during the quiz.

Friday, May 21, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - The Surprising World of Pulsars
Lecturer: Amruta Jaodand
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Gina Panopoulou, Shreyas Vissapragada
Attendees: 70
Engaging talk and good dynamic on the Q&A panel. Lots of questions from audience.

Monday, June 7, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Junhan Kim, Britt Lundgren
Attendees: 100
Great presentations and good dialog with everyone!

Monday, June 14, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online, Mandarin
MC: Yuguang Chen, Zhuyun Zhuang
Speakers (2): Yanbei Chen, Yuhan Yao
Attendees: 7000
Make sure that the streaming through restream.io works to Weibo. If it does not, then
contact restream.io help and ask them to turn on compatibility mode for the custom RTMP
channel that we use to stream to Weibo. Also, make sure the title/description is set for
Facebook in restream.io, but YouTube doesn't matter. Lastly, make sure the host is in
"gallery mode" because that is what will broadcast to restream and the various output streams.
Bit turnout as usual on Weibo. Event went well.

Friday, June 25, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - Quantum Technologies: From Fundamental Physics to Deep Space Communications
Lecturer: Maria Spiropulu
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Reinier Janssen, Mia de los Reyes
Attendees: 62
Challenging to get this one scheduled with the speaker, but in the end it went OK.

Friday, October 15, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - Tiny but Powerful: Hunting for Extreme White Dwarfs
Lecturer: Ilaria Caiazzo
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Evan Nunez, Ivey Davis
Attendees: 60
Great talk and some lively discussion.

Monday, October 18, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online, Mandarin
MC: Yuguang Chen, Dongzi Li
Speakers (2): Jinyi Yang, Fei Dai
Attendees: 14000
Huge turnout on Weibo due to a last minute push from Yuguang in advertising.
14000 audience members on Weibo, but only about 15 audience members on YouTube!
Very little interaction through menti pub trivia. Very good presentations, though.

Monday, October 25, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Julie Bellerose, Ritoban Basu Thakur
Attendees: 60
Some initial hiccups with a slightly late start due to a speaker arriving 5 minutes before showtime.
Didn't broadcast to Facebook Live and only was on YouTube.
Great talks and lots of good questions from audience.

Monday, November 1, 5:00-7:00PM

Astronomy on Tap Online, Spanish
MC: Tony Rodriguez, Benjamin Idini
Speakers (2): Sofia Gallego, Geronimo Villanueva
Attendees: 20
Tony contacted several different places to advertise, including:

• Griffith Observatory Media Team
• Univ de Guanajuato
• Sociedad Astronómica Queretana
• Astrobaja
• Sociedad Astronómica del Caribe
• Sociedad Astronómica de México
• Asociación de Aficionados a la Astronomía (Uruguay)
• Asociación Salvadoreña de Astronomía
• Asociación Boliviana de Astronomía
• Centro Mexicano de Divulgación Científica
• LA Astronomy Club
• San Diego Astronomy Association
• Asociación Astronómica de Puebla
• Asociación Astronómica de Saltillo
• Asociación Astronómica UADY (Mérida, México)
• LA County Library
• Cal Academy of Sciences

I contacted my various sources that I described in the previous event.
Despite all that, we had a lot of problems. For one, we only had 20 concurrent viewers
to see the stream. Maybe part of this was due to us holding the event on Dia de los Muertos.
Also, one of our speakers didn't show up--Geronimo Villanueva. He wrote a couple days later
to say he was in remote Argentina without an internet connection, but he hadn't responded to
my emails for a month and had assured me that he'd be able to get an internet connection
when we last spoke. Lastly, one of our hosts, Benjamin Idini announced that he wouldn't
be able to help for any future events. So I'm losing hope that these spanish language events
are actually worth the trouble. I'll maybe try one more, but otherwise, I'm just going to cancel
them because it's too much work for like 20 audience members.

Monday, November 8, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Sasha Hinkley, Colette Salyk
Attendees: 50
Great event featuring some cool JWST talks. Good feedback from audience.

Friday, November 19, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - The Enigmatic Corona: Powerhouse of Accreting Black Holes
Lecturer: Nikita Kamraj
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Shreyas Vissapragada, Kathryn Plant
Attendees: 60
Very engaged audience and good talk from Nikita.
Great conversational aspect of the Q&A!

Monday, December 6, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap Online
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Christina Williams, Justin Spilker
Attendees: 80
Great talks on future science with JWST. Engaged audience.

Friday, December 10, 7-9PM

Lecture and Stargazing - A Brief History of the Fast Radio Burst Enigma
Lecturer: Liam Connor
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2): Stephanie Duppe, Nicole Wallack
Attendees: 80
Well presented talk on FRBs and great chemistry during Q&A panel.

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