Welcome to the Westport Astronomical Society

BOB MEADOWS! WAS Observatory Director

The Bob Meadows Annual Stellafane Report | WAS Observatory Director Bob Meadows

WAS Observatory Director Bob Meadows reports on the latest innovations from The 82nd Convention of Amateur Telescope Makers

Dr. Daniel Wolf Savin – Senior Research Scientist from the Astrophysics Laboratory at Columbia University

A Brief History of Chemistry in the Cosmos | Dr. Daniel Wolf Savin – Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University

Come travel down the cosmic chemical pathway from the Big Bang to the formation of stars and to life as we know it. Our chemical studies have advanced understanding how the first stars formed and how the raw materials needed for life were first synthesized. Join me as I hop, skip, and jump my way across cosmic time and explain key chemical processes along the way.

Daniel Wolf Savin received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University, working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was a post-doctoral research physicist at the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley. From there he moved to the Astrophysics Laboratory at Columbia University, where he is now a senior research scientist. His research career began in the area of atomic laboratory astrophysics but has since expanded to include molecular laboratory astrophysics, plasma laboratory astrophysics, and solar physics. Dr. Savin was a driving force behind the recent creation of the Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society and currently serves as the LAD Secretary. He has authored or co-authored over 170 publications and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Dr. Federica Bianco, NYU

Dr. Federica Bianco, Research Scientist at NYU CUSP, the Center for Urban Science and Progress, and in the NYU CCPP Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics.

Dr. Bianco studies lightcurves, time series of light, in astronomy, with applications in stellar evolution, cosmology, and solar system science, and in the urban environment at the CUSP urban observatory, where the study of urban lightcurves enables sociological, ecological, economical inference.

She is the co-chair of the LSST Transients and Variable Stars Collaboration: a group of over 170 scientists who are preparing to optimally exploit the revolutionary LSST survey for transient science, and to assure that the survey design is suitable to support the study of the transient sky.