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.

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