Welcome to Houston Astronomical Society

Venus is the same size as the Earth with many similar properties; however, Venus has a thick caustic atmosphere that obscures observing the surface from orbit. Thereby inhibiting investigations of volcanic structures, and potentially active volcanoes. Despite these challenges, over the last decade, there have been numerous attempts and approaches to constrain if Venus is volcanically active today. Dr. Filiberto will summarize what is known about the volcanic state of Venus from orbital and laboratory investigations.

Speaker Bio: Dr Justin Filiberto is the Manager of the Research Office within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at the Johnson Space Center. As manager, they oversee the diverse research program and associated laboratories within the division. Their research has mainly focused on constraining planetary volatile budgets with implications for habitability, and magma genesis conditions and timing in planetary interiors. Their work has spanned multiple planetary bodies including Mars, the Earth, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. They are a science team member and a co-investigator for the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) probe mission to Venus, which is scheduled to launch in 2029.

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This meeting will be held virtually via Zoom. To attend, you must register for the meeting. You can do so using the link below. You will receive an email with the details of the meeting and a link that will allow you to join in.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvcu2uqDItHN1EPQlnAln6v0YlZM5M7km- 

You only need to register once!

Join us Friday, July 7^th,  2023 at 7:00 pm CDST. See you then!

In mid-2001 a coworker asked me to go stargazing at Columbus with him. He had just bought an LX200, and we looked at Messier objects. This was fun to do so I bought a 10" Meade Starfinder and began logging these objects. After a while someone said I should turn the list in and receive an Observing Program award. I didn't know there were "Observing Programs." So, I turned it in and after some "recommendations," Amelia Goldberg gave me my first observing award, Messier Award Number 2000.

Master Observer Steven Powell

I enjoyed participating in these programs and sometimes I brought them on vacation. The Binocular Messier was completed while on vacation in a park in New Mexico and the Constellation Hunter Southern Hemisphere #8 was completed while on vacation in New Zealand on a cruise ship going to Tanzania. What better thing to do on a cruise ship?

As an Electronics Engineer by profession, I wanted to do the Radio Astronomy program and completed award #13—gold level. This one is nice because most of it can be done during the day.

The Herschel 400 was saved for last because I didn't have the equipment to complete it. I wanted to use the club's Celestron C14 but after an evening struggling with alignment, I decided to purchase a new Celestron C11 and an iOptron CEM60 mount. Then it went smoothly.

My current project is the HAS Texas 45. I assume previous observations can be used but I have chosen to start from scratch. I couldn’t find a few objects on the first pass, but so far, I have completed almost 10 for each season.

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Rene Gedaly was presented the Omega Centauri Award for "Promotion of Public Awareness of Astronomy" at the 2023 Texas Star Party. The award was presented by TSP director Ted Saker following "The Farthest Exploration of Worlds in History: NASA's New Horizons Mission," a talk delivered by Dr. S. Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Rene's particular interest in public awareness is rekindling the love of astronomy women first discovered as girls. Recognizing that women need to see themselves as belonging before joining, Gedaly created the Women's Special Interest Group (WSIG), a social group as well as a club within an astronomy club. Events included Pizza & Planets, a telescope petting zoo, themed lunches out, and a year-long observing program at the club’s dark site.  

During this period women members increased from below ten percent to close to 25% of HAS membership, and most of these new members joined as primary members, not associates. By happenstance and then by design, website content beckoned others to engage in astronomy relatively close to home. Girl scout groups, private religious and same sex schools, college astronomy clubs and community education offerings from Anahuac to Houston to Schulenburg found their way to increased astronomy engagement at our dark site or theirs. Rene was delighted to serve as the science field advisor to the club’s first official high school intern, a young woman who considered astronomy a “candy store” of science and who would go on to become a chemical engineer. She found Rene, president at the time, and the observatory through the HAS website.

Rene Gedaly is a past president (2015–2017) of the Houston Astronomical Society, a past operations manager for the Texas Star Party, Inc., and is a newly elected director to the TSP board. She currently serves the Houston Astronomical Society as Field Trip & Observing chairperson, lead trainer for observatory building and visual telescope operations, and coordinates the HAS Texas 45 observing program that she authored. She also provides content management, development, and support as part of the Web Technology team.

Rene Gedaly joins these previous Omega Centauri Award recipients who also remain active members of the Houston Astronomical Society: Don Selle, Will Young, and Joe Khalaf (2022), Daniel & Rebeca Roy (2019), Joe Khalaf (2017), Debbie Moran (2015), Larry Mitchell (2006), and Amelia & Steve Goldberg (1991).