San Francisco Amateur Astronomers – Home
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Participate in SFAA Activities
Bring your friends, provide refreshments, contribute to the newsletter. There are tons of ways to volunteer and meet others who share your enthusiasm for star gazing. Young people are welcome.
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SFAA star parties
Join the SFAA twice a month for public star parties at various locations in San Francisco or on Mt.Tamalpais.
We Offer Great Member Benefits
The SFAA is a club that welcomes people of all ages, experience levels and interest areas. If you have an interest in the night sky, and wish you knew more, the SFAA is a great way to get started! We offer beginner ‘star tours’, loaner scopes and advice.
JOIN SFAA
Membership brings with it many benefits, including access to:
Lectures
Free and open to the public as well as to members, the SFAA hosts a distinguished list of guest speakers throughout the year. Our Speaker Series attracts leaders from astronomy, physics and related disciplines who share with SFAA members and the general public the latest developments from cutting-edge scientific programs. The Series invite experts from nearby NASA-Ames, Stanford, SETI, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, as well as speakers throughout the US via live-stream.
Star Parties
Each month the SFAA hosts member-only viewing atop Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. Private viewing nights like this are one of the great benefits of SFAA membership, offering peaceful viewing, with no street lights, great range of visibility from the site, (bathrooms!) and the opportunity to network with fellow astronomers. This venue is truly wonderful because it is almost always ‘above the fog’, making viewing especially ideal when the city lights are blocked by the marine layer. Many nights we can see the Milky Way in all its glory!
Special Events
Each year the SFAA hosts members-only camping and star parties at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park in coordination with the National Park Service. Other member-only events have included night-time tours of Lick Observatory and weekend camping and star parties at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma County. The SFAA works with schools and universities to bring telescopes to Science and Astronomy nights throughout San Francisco and Marin.
Telescope Loans
The SFAA has a number of telescopes that it loans to members who are just starting out to discover the world of astronomy and night sky viewing. The available equipment includes simple-to-use Dobsonian telescopes, computerized “go-to” telescopes, as well as numerous telescope accessories. New users are encouraged to attend member-only star parties so they can be tutored by more experienced members on how to setup their loaner scopes and to plan their viewing session.
Livestream Lecture – February 16, 2022
16 February 2022, 7:00 PM, Wednesday, Live-streamed via Zoom, YouTube and Facebook
“Shocking Origin: Meteor Impacts and the Chemistry of Life”
by
Arianna Gleason-Holbrook Stanford, SLAC
When and where life originated on Earth, and if, or where, life exists elsewhere in the cosmos are some of the biggest unanswered scientific questions of our time. Simple organic materials in meteorites and comets are often cited as potential sources for the initial organics which seeded prebiotic evolution on Earth. However, upon impact the original compounds present are not always delivered unchanged. Collisions and impacts between objects at all scales, from meteorites to planets, can produce novel molecules relevant to prebiotic chemistry – including complex amino acids and nucleobases.
Previous studies have focused on either characterizing the final products or observing the kinetics of their formation on longer timescales. These studies have shown that in the initial moments of a collision any organics present will fragment into ions and radicals which then recombine to form more complex products. These impact processes generate extreme conditions of pressures a million times atmospheric pressure and temperatures as hot as the surface of the Sun.
In order to study how these complex organic fragments form and rules governing breakdown of the starting molecules and build-up of complex materials, we use SLAC’s X-ray Free Electron Laser to visualize chemical bonds breaking and forming in femtoseconds. In this presentation, I will show how the process of shock compression may hold the key to revealing the origin of life via complex chemical dynamics taking place at ultrafast timescales at extraordinary high-pressures and -temperatures.
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