Lecture & Book Signing: David Levy - "A Nightwatchman's Journey"

Adirondack Sky Festival

On Sunday, July 21, the Adirondack Sky Center will launch an annual event celebrating Adirondack Skies in partnership with the community of Tupper Lake, The Wild Center natural history museum, Tupper Arts Center, and other organizations.

Why celebrate Adirondack Skies? The Adirondacks benefit from some of the darkest and clearest skies east of the Mississippi River.

We will have fun celebrating an untapped natural resource in the Adirondacks – our dark, clear, unpolluted skies – and the creation of an AstroScience Center museum and planetarium.

Schedule:

• 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Observatory (178 Big Wolf Road): solar scopes, crafts, scientific demonstrations, scavenger hunt, prizes, and more!
• 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: StarLab Planetarium, Tupper Lake High School Gym, (25 Chaney Road): Take an intergalactic trip
• 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Ongoing Activities at The Wild Center from 10am - 5pm (45 Museum Drive - please note: free admission to Adirondack Sky Festival talks listed below; other activities at the Wild Center require admission)
  • 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM: Light Pollution and Impacts on Wildlife - The International Dark Sky Association, at The Wild Center (45 Museum Drive)
  • 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM: Al Nagler, Helping Apollo 11 Astronauts Get to the Moon: Work on Simulators, at The Wild Center (45 Museum Drive)
• 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM: Celestial Stories and Traditions: the Haudenosaunee / Mohawk People, and Greek and Roman Sky Mythology. Presented by David Fadden (Six Nations Museum) and Jeffrey Miller (St. Lawrence University) Tupper Lake High School Auditorium, (25 Chaney Road)
• 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM: Music of the Skies - "Night School", Flanders Performance Park Bandshell, (17-19 Demars Blvd)
• 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Evening Stargazing at the Observatory - weather permitting (178 Big Wolf Road)

Downloads:

• Download a map of the event locations around town and a copy of the festival schedule.

Sky Festival Speakers:

• Aileen A. O’Donoghue is the Priest Professor of Physics at St. Lawrence University. She received an Associate of Arts degree at Colorado Mountain College that propelled her to earning her B.S. at Fort Lewis College and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Her research is primarily in radio astronomy and she has conducted observations with the Very Large Array and Arecibo radio telescopes. She has also observed dwarf galaxies in the visible band at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope and the optical spectra of stars using the 90” Bok telescope at Kitt Peak and the 1.5 m telescope at Cerro Tololo, Chile. She is currently a member of the ALFALFA undergraduate team conducing a blind spectral survey of the sky visible from the Arecibo Observatory cataloging clouds of neutral hydrogen. During the winter, she writes an astronomy column for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise called "The Wilderness Above."
• Al Nagler: There is not an amateur astronomer today who has not marveled at the fantastic view of the heavens as seen through Nagler and Tele Vue eyepieces. The man behind the creation of these coveted optics, Al Nagler, is himself an amateur astronomer little different in his approach to and love for the sky than the rest of us. This is a bit of his story… "When my father took me to the Hayden Planetarium in 1948, I was injected with the astronomy bug. My interest was piqued with a 3-inch Skyscope reflector, a fine $30 instrument with a cardboard tube and pipe fitting legs. Since 1952, I've been excited about visual observing and astrophotography. Telescope making was merely a means to this end. I learned about telescope making from the classical ATM books, friends at the Hayden Planetarium, and the Scientific Techniques Lab at Bronx High School of Science. My optical design career began at Farrand Optical Company from 1957 to 1973. Most exciting and encouraging throughout my life has been my annual pilgrimage to Stellafane (a telescope gathering in Vermont. Later I developed an interest in refractors, conceived originally as test instruments for my eyepieces, and have an 8-inch aperture scope for my own use. I still love telescopes as both hobby and business. I have worked on eyepieces, telescopes and viewing devices with two major goals: to make astronomy as easy and versatile as possible to encourage, rather than discourage, newcomers, and secondly, to provide a visual experience as close to a "spacewalk" as possible by obtaining the widest, sharpest, highest contrast views. In the future, amateur astronomy will be expanding in every direction: software, education, CCD astronomy, and the same old backyard observing of the wonders we love. With increasing sky pollution, I expect dark-sky star parties to become more popular vacation destinations. [Adapted from:Reeves, R. "Star People - Real People in Astronomy." Amateur Astronomy #6 (Summer 1995).]
• Andy Anderson, PhD, is Academic Technology Specialist for Mathematical and Spatial Data Analysis at Amherst College. His doctorate is in Physics. He will be speaking about Light Pollution and Impacts on Wildlife. Andy has more than twenty years’ experience in research, teaching, and using and supporting academic technology in higher education.
• Bruce McClure is presenting shows in the StarLab portable planetarium at the High School during the Adirondack Sky Festival. He and his wife present sundial-making workshops and astronomy and mathematics classes that incorporate hands-on learning activities and outdoor exploration. He has published articles in Amateur Astronomy, Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines; Mountaineer Skies and North American Skies newsletters and in Adirondack Life magazine and the Watertown Daily Times.
• David Fadden In the Akwesasne Mohawk community, artist and Six Nations Indian Museum Director David Fadden has been telling the stories of his people through his art and his family’s museum. His work can be seen at the Wild Center and also at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and galleries in New York City.
• Gib Brown is offering shows on Planet Adirondack at the Wild Center during the Adirondack Sky Festival. Gib has taught for more than 45 years; 34 as a high school teacher of Earth Sciences and Physics. He currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at Clinton Community College. Gib worked as On-Air Meteorologist for NBC Channel 5 for more than 37 years and retired just last year. He is an avid skier, biker, and stargazer. Gib and his wife Marilyn love Adirondack life. He has been involved with the Adirondack Sky Center more than 10 years and is a Trustee.
• Jeffrey Miller is an astronomer in the Physics department at St. Lawrence University, and teaches Phys 101 - Introduction to Astronomy and many sections of introductory physics lab courses. He is involved in the ALFALFA Project, a consortium of 23 universities led by Cornell University and funded by the NSF, that uses the 1000-ft. (305-meter) antenna of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center's Arecibo Observatory to measure extragalactic abundance of neutral Hydrogen (HI). Jeff serves on the board of directors of the Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory, which has established an observatory for public use in Tupper Lake, NY, under the dark skies of the Adirondack Mountains, and plans to build a full-scale astronomy museum and planetarium. He frequently gives public astronomy lectures for the Sky Center.
• Josh Thomas is Assistant Professor in Physics at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and a Trustee of the Adirondack Sky Center. He completed his PhD and other studies at the University of Toledo, and his research interests include Stellar Spectroscopy, Astrophysical Jets, Laboratory Astrophysics, and Numerical Simulation. Josh has published multiple refereed articles on these topics.
• Tim Connolly is an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer as well as being a New York State Trooper. He is a frequent instructor and presenter on astrophotography at the Adirondack Sky Center’s annual Astrophotography Workshops and recently presented at the Northeast Astro-Imaging Conference in Rockland County.

The Adirondack Sky Festival was sponsored by
I Love NY
and the
Stewart’s / Dake Family Foundations

Summer Classes

Join us for summer classes! This summer's classes include:

• Crash on the Moon
• Building and Launching Rockets - For ages 12+; An adult is required to participate in this class
• Robotics
• Our Solar System

Classes at the Adirondack Sky Center's office and classroom, 36 High Street, Tupper Lake (map), from 3:00 - 5:00 pm on the following Friday's:

• July 12
• July 19
• July 26
• August 2

Classes are free and for children ages 10+. Call or email to sign up:

(518) 359-3538
info@adirondackskycenter.org

Sign up for one class or all four!

Lecture: Dr. Aileen O'Donoghue - "Seeking the Heart of M87"

Event: "Cosmic Images of the Wilderness Above - Astrophotography from the Adirondack Sky Center"

Lecture: Gib Brown - "Examining the Pulse of Mars: Studying the Geology of the Red Planet"