Past Events from 2025

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.

Friday, January 24, 8-10PM

Stargazing Lecture - The Physics of the Warp Drive
Lecturer: Elias Most
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2+): Nicholas Rui, Sarah Habib
Telescope Captain: Sam Rose
Telescope Volunteers (3+): Harshda Saxena, Delina Levine, Hazel Yun, Tim Proudkii, Xander Hall, Maggie Li
Attendees: 250
190 in person and 60 online. Great turnout for a winter event. Elias gave a great presentation and explanation of faster-than-light travel.
Clear conditions and the "planet parade" meant good observing outside. We had 2 dobsonians and 2 electronic scopes looking at
Jupiter, Mars, M42, and M31. Great volunteers and great night overall.

Friday, January 31, 6:30-8PM

Telescope Training on Dobs and eVscope
Organizer: Cameron Hummels
Participants: Tim Proudkii, Sasha Mintz, Maria Sanchez
Good group. We got through setting up and taking down 8" dob; viewing Moon, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter.
Also setup and takedown of eVscope with a view of M42.

Monday, February 3, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap @ Dog Haus
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Stella Ocker, Matthew Stumbo
Volunteer (3+): Maggie Li, Sam Rose, Delaney White, Tim Proudkii, Sasha Mintz
Attendees: 160
Great group and excellent presentations. Clouds cleared a bit at the end, which allowed observations of M1 on the eVscope.
Jason Achilles was unable to join at the last minute. New merchandise includes tshirts, pint glasses, coffee mugs, and water bottles.

Friday, February 14, 7:30-9:30PM

Stargazing Lecture - Powerful Jets from Supermassive Black Holes
Lecturer: Martijn Oei
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2+): Kenny Lau, Dee Dunne
Telescope Captain: Sam Rose
Telescope Volunteers (3+): Maggie Li, Harshda Saxena, Maria Sanchez
Attendees: 150
110 in person and 40 online. Valentines Day, so wasn't sure how turnout would be. Martijn gave a great lecture, and light clouds but
still decent observing of planentary objects. Had some issues with microphone where Martijn spoke too closely to it, and it sounded
distorted online.

Death Valley NP Dark Sky Festival
Organizer: Cameron Hummels
Volunteers: Sam Rose, Delina Levine, Luke Handley, Aniket Sanghi, Dee Dunne, Hazel Yun, Tim Proudkii, Sasha Mintz, Mike Kelzenberg, Facundo Perez, Charles Sommer, Delaney White, Jakob Faber, Tirth Surti, Sam Ponnada, Emily Silich
Friday Astro on Tap Speakers: Emily Silich, Mike Kelzenberg
Saturday Astro on Tap Speakers: Dee Dunne, Aniket Sanghi
Attendees: 6800
Really spectacular weekend. Good turnout from the Caltech team for all of the various activities. Two great Astro on Taps with 180 and 200 attendees respectively. 200 people at Cameron's presentation and around 100 at the Q&A Panel.
Tons of people showed up to the science expo over the two days (in the thousands). The weather was perfect, with no wind, no cold, and clear skies at night.
We brought the 6" and 10" dobs along with my eVscope2 and SeeStar, which worked well, although fitting everything in my car was a challenge. Both nights the bars struggled to provide a microphone and speakers, which wasn't great, but
between NPS helping on Friday and finally tracking down a speaker from Xanterra on Saturday, we made it work. I cannot recommend working with Xanterra again, since they are clearly only interested in making money and wasting people's time.
After exchanging 15 emails in the months prior to the event, they had done virtually nothing to prepare for the Astro on Tap on Saturday night, with staff not knowing it was happening and them closing the kitchen at 7PM. But we still pulled it off.
We were a little short on the Saturday afternoon science expo session, which is arguably the busiest shift, so maybe we'll try to ensure we have enough people for that one next time.

Monday, February 24, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap @ Dog Haus
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Tony Rodriguez, Mandy Chen
Volunteer (3+): Harshda Saxena, Maggie Li, Wuji Wang
Attendees: 160
Clear conditions and not too cold. Great talks by Tony and Mandy. I was exhausted after the big weekend at Death Valley for the Dark Sky Festival, but we made it work.
First time recording with the USB mixer and sound board, and hopefully it worked.

Friday, February 28, 5:30-7:30PM

Telescopes with San Rafael Elementary Science Fair
Organizer: Cameron Hummels
Volunteers (1-2): Kira Nolan
Attendees: 150
We joined local school San Rafael Elementary for their science fair. There were a number of outdoor activities for the kids to do,
including our telescope set up, as well as indoor activities with entries in the science fair. At our station, we had views of the
"planet parade" including Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. We also ended up looking at the Orion Nebula. Pretty patchy clouds,
so it wasn't great observing, but the kids were excited nonetheless. We also handed out some NASA HST images as swag.
Lots of enthusiastic children, but we were a little too close to the air-powered rocket demonstration and rockets kept coming
down on our group. If we do it again, it might be good to move.

Friday, March 7, 7:30-9:30PM

Stargazing Lecture - Uncovering the History of the Universe with Radio Astronomy
Lecturer: Ruby Byrne
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2+): Kenny Lau, Harshda Saxena
Telescope Captain: Sam Rose
Telescope Volunteers (3+): Maria Camarca, Tim Proudkii, Sasha Mintz
Attendees: 230
180 in-person + 50 online = 230 attendees. Despite initial problems getting volunteers, the event went well. Lots of
enthusiastic attendees joined us to learn about cosmology. Ruby's presentation was really well done, and many people
stuck around for the Q&A panel.

Friday, March 21, 7-9PM

Telescopes with Holly Avenue Elementary Science Fair
Organizer: Cameron Hummels
Volunteers (1-2): Kira Nolan
Attendees: 200
Kira and I arrived at 7:00PM to set up and the science fair was in full swing already. We brought the 6" dob and the eVscope,
as well as the Caltech Astro table with some HST images and business cards. Sunset was at 7PM, so we initially just set up the
6" dob to look at Jupiter, but had to wait about 30 minutes until the eVscope could calibrate on some stars. Then it pointed at M42.
Jupiter was a great target, but the eVscope had some problems with M42 due to off-axis light from overhead lights getting into the sensor.
The effect was that the image was a bit purple, but people didn't seem to care too much. We stuck around until after the science fair ended
(it ended at 8PM, but people kept coming to the telescopes until 8:45). The students were very excited to look through the telescopes!

Monday, March 24, 7:30-9:30PM

Astronomy on Tap @ Dog Haus
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Jamie Bock, Jack Sayers
Volunteer (3+): Delina Levine, Harshda Saxena, Sam Rose, Maggie Li, Emily Silich, Facundo Perez Paolino
Attendees: 250
Great evening overall! Weather was warm and clear, and the volunteers were able to get some great views of Bode's Galaxy using
the eVscope. Big turnout for Jamie and Jack talking about cosmology and SPHEREx. Both talks went very well, and there were
a lot of enthusiastic attendees. The pub trivia was hard, but most people still stuck around for the answers at the end. Recording
went pretty well using the equipment, but still some 1kHz humming of feedback in the recording.

Friday-Sunday, March 28-30

Great Orion Dark Sky Festival
Organizer: Cameron Hummels
Volunteers: Emily Silich, Dee Dunne, Nicholas Rui, Yoonsoo Kim
Attendees: 300
Event went very well. Some moderate wind for a couple of nights, but it wasn't a major problem. I put my computer in a sealed plastic bin,
which protected it from the blowing dust. Weather was cloudy for first and third nights, but some good views the second night. About a dozen
telescopes set up, including 2 28" dobs and a Celestron Origin, which is really spectacular. The talks went well overall, with me giving one talk
each of the three nights to an audience of 300. The grads were great with some good engagement at the science demos. We had the marshmallow
demo and a solar telescope set up. They also did a wonderful job on the Q&A panel with thoughtful answers and engagement from each of them.
Definitely one of the smoothest dark sky festivals we've participated in.

Friday, April 4, 7:30-9:30PM

Stargazing Lecture - If You Give a Black Hole a Cookie
Lecturer: Jean Somalwar
Lecture Captain: Cameron Hummels
Lecture Volunteers (2+): Elias Kammoun, Pranav Nagarajan
Telescope Captain: Delina Levine
Telescope Volunteers (3+): Maggie Li, Delaney White
Attendees: 160
130 in-person + 30 online = 160 attendees. A little short on volunteers but we made it work. Great skies for observing with views of M82, Jupiter, and Moon.
Jean gave a good down-to-earth presentation on black hole accretion. And the Q&A panel was really good with lots of discussion on black holes.

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

Astronomy on Tap @ Dog Haus
MC: Cameron Hummels
Speakers (2): Aurora Kesseli, Viraj Karambelkar
Volunteer (3+): Harshda Saxena, Emily Hu, Maggie Li, Tim Proudkii, Sasha Mintz
Attendees: 150
Slightly lower turn out tonight but still a great evening. A bit cold but clear weather for the telescopes. Great talks and excellent live music by
Jason and Forrest. No technical difficulties after we finally got that noisy 1 kHz tone out of the recorded sound. Phew! Event went pretty well
overall.

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