General Meeting – August 2018

6:30 pm – Introductory Presentation

Title:  Member’s Night

Speaker:  various TAAA members

 Reports by several TAAA members on a variety of topics.

7:30 pm – Main Presentation

Title:  The night sky of planet Vulcan: Exozodiacal light observations with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)

Speaker:  Dr. Steve Ertel is a German astronomer now working at Steward Observatory. He studies planetary systems through observations of their dust similar to that in our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt, Asteroid Belt, and zodiacal dust. He also studies the fate of planetary systems as their host stars evolve into giant stars and white dwarfs. Steve received his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel, Germany. He has worked as an observational astronomer at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the European Southern Observatory, Chile. As the instrument scientist of the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer at Mt. Graham, AZ, he leads the NASA-funded HOSTS survey for exozodiacal dust around nearby stars

Zodiacal light is one of the most elusive features of our night sky; visible in the West after dusk and in the East before dawn as a large cone of faint light stretching from the horizon along the ecliptic. Arizona’s dark skies make it ideal for observing its cause; sunlight scattered from zodiacal dust particles near Earth’s orbit. Surely, the night skies of many Earth-like exoplanets must show a similar feature. Studying exozodiacal dust can give us insights into their architecture, specifically for those exoplanets in the habitable zone. At the same time, the dust poses an obstacle to imaging habitable exoplanets with a large space telescope, one of NASA’s primary future goals. Dr. Ertel will present the efforts using the LBT to detect and study exozodiacal dust. He will also talk more broadly about how the LBT’s interferometer makes it the first 30-meter class telescope on Earth.