The guest speaker of the March 27th, 2008 meeting was Dr. Yan Fernandez an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida.  Dr. Fernandez topic was "The Spitzer Space Telescope's View of the Solar System."  The Spitzer Space Telescope is one of NASA's four Great Telescopes and is designed to provide an unprecedented infrared view of our Solar System.  The Spitzer telescope was launched in 2003 and  placed in an orbit around the sun that trails the earth in  it's orbit.  In the 1500 hours of observation time the telescope has observed near Earth asteroids, unusual comments, icy asteroids beyond Neptune and the cloud of dust that forms in the wake behind the earth's voyage through space.  Dr. Fernadez indicated that the hydrogen on the telescope will only last through next year, but NASA has a replacement telescope with improved sensitivity and range in development to replace the Spitzer when it reaches it's end of life.

---

On April 9, 2008 Dr. Diane Sartore, a teacher at the Pine Ridge High School in Deltona, Florida provided a lecture on the remote operational capability of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope at Emery Riddle University. The Goldstone Radio Telescope was at one time was NASA's premier radio telescope for tracking deep space probes.  A few years ago NASA decommissioned the telescope and turned it over to the Lewis Center for Educational Research.  The Lewis Center periodically conducts workshops to provide educators with hands on operation of the Goldstone Telescope.  This program known as GAVRT  permits graduates to schedule several hours a year on the telescope.  During this observation time the user can remotely gather and reduce the collected data.  Diane recently completed the GAVRT program and demonstrated how this remote data collection capability can be applied in the secondary class room environment.

Small Radio Telescope Project

SoutheastCon 2008