by Victor Davis, Program Chair

November Meeting

The November, 2024 meeting of the AAAP will take place in Peyton Hall on the campus of Princeton University on Tuesday, November 12th at 7:30 PM. As usual, the meeting is open to AAAP members and the public. Participants can join the meeting in-person at Peyton Hall or log in to the Zoom session as early as 7:00 pm to chat informally before the meeting begins. The evening’s guest speaker is Princeton Postdoc Manuel Cuesta, who will give a talk on remote observations of solar dynamics, including recent research using the Parker Solar Probe.

Options for Attending the Meeting

You may choose to attend the meeting in person or participate via Zoom or YouTube as we’ve been doing for the past few years. (See How to Participate below for details). Due to security concerns, if you log in before the host has set up internet connectivity in Peyton Hall, you may need to wait in the Waiting Room for a few minutes until the host is prepared to admit you into the meeting. You’ll need to unmute yourself to make comments or ask questions. It’s polite, though not required, for you to enable your camera so other participants can see you. A week or so after the meeting, the video of the lecture and Q&A will be posted on AAAP’s public YouTube channel.

The traditional “meet the speaker” dinner will be held at Winberie’s Restaurant & Bar, One Palmer Square, Princeton, NJ. Reservation is for 5:45 pm. Please advise the Program Chair if you plan to attend.

Here’s the anticipated agenda for November, 2024’s monthly meeting of the AAAP:

Getting to Peyton Hall
The parking lots across the street (Ivy Lane) from Peyton Hall are now construction sites, unavailable for parking. We’ve been advised by the administration of the astrophysics department that we should park in the new enclosed parking garage off Fitzrandolph street and walk around the stadium and athletic fields. Here’s a map of the campus and walking routes from the parking garage to Peyton Hall. The map shows the recently completed East Garage. Not shown is an access road Sweet Gum that connects from Faculty Road to an entrance at the lower left corner of the garage. Stadium Road connects from Fitzrandolph Road to another entrance at the opposite corner (and higher level) of the garage. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk from the parking garage to Peyton Hall.

Remote Observations of Solar Dynamics and Results from the Parker Solar Probe
One of the key discoveries leading up to the space age was the solar wind, which permeates interplanetary space throughout the heliosphere. Dr. Cuesta will review the history of remote observations of such solar dynamics.  He will discuss the impact of space physics research involving the investigation of space weather with the goal of predicting extreme solar events, which cause large disruptions of the solar wind. Coronal mass ejections, for example, usually carry with them enhanced particle populations accelerated to very high energy. These high energy particles and mass ejections of plasma sometimes ram into the Earth, causing power-grids to shut down, increasing radiation exposure to people in mid-flight, and communication disruptions. The Parker Solar Probe mission is the project that aims to answer many of the unsolved questions in field of space physics, such as sources of particle acceleration and their mechanisms, the main driver(s) of the solar wind, and the coronal heating problem. Dr. Cuesta’s  presentation gives some of the first results from this mission and some current topics of ongoing research in the Space Physics Group here at Princeton University.

Manuel Cuesta
Dr. Cuesta earned his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Delaware. For his thesis, he worked on the radial evolution of turbulence intermittency in the solar wind in comparison to well-known quantities in hydrodynamic turbulence, as well as anisotropy and compressibility, finding that the solar wind in many ways behaves like a wind tunnel.  He has analyzed data measured in situ via numerous spacecraft missions including NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, Helios 1, Advanced Composition Explorer, Wind, Magnetospheric Multi-Scale, and Voyager 1. He was awarded the Donald L. Turcotte Award from the American Geophysical Union in recognition of his outstanding dissertation research for potential contributions to the field of nonlinear geophysics. He currently conducts research at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University relevant to energetic particles and their interaction with solar wind dynamics. 

How to Participate (Links)

Click the above icons for Zoom and YouTube

Date	Featured Speaker	Topic
December 10, 2024	Jesse Christiansen christia.ipac.caltech.edu	Dr. Christiansen is Senior Scientist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. She’ll describe her research and the current status of Exoplanet discoveries.
January 12, 2025	Rebecca Boyle rebecca.b.boyle@gmail.com	Rebecca Boyle, science writer, essayist, and Contributing Editor to Scientific American, will discuss her new book, “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are.”  Suggested by Ira Polans.

As always, members’ comments and suggestions are gratefully accepted and much appreciated.

victor.davis@verizon.net
program@princetonastronomers
(908) 581-1780 cell