by Victor Davis, Program Chair

A Change of Venue
The June, 2025 meeting of the AAAP will take place in the planetarium at the NJ State Museum in Trenton. Traditionally, the club’s last meeting of the academic year takes place in the state planetarium, and includes the planetarium’s prerecorded sky show and the guest speaker’s live presentation. This month’s guest speaker is Dr. Jacob Hamer, Assistant Curator of Planetarium Education at the New Jersey State Museum. He’ll present the planetarium’s sky show and the film “Spark: The Universe in Us” and his live presentation “Tides in the Solar System and Beyond.”

As usual, the meeting will be the second Tuesday of the month, this month June 10, 2025. Doors of the planetarium will open at 7:00 pm and the meeting will begin promptly at 7:30 pm. Members and the public are invited.

Attending Live is Your Only Option
Due to copyright constraints on the prerecorded portions of the program and complications with streaming visuals that are projected onto the planetarium’s dome, the June meeting will not be available on Zoom or streamed on YouTube. There is ample parking outside the planetarium; 205 West State Street, Trenton, NJ.

Also, due to the change in venue, there will be no “meet the speaker” dinner this month.

Here’s the anticipated agenda for June, 2025’s monthly meeting of the AAAP:

Featured Speaker:

Jacob Hamer, PhD

Assistant Curator, Planetarium Education

New Jersey State Museum

Jacob.Hamer@sos.nj.gov

“Tides in the Solar System and Beyond”

Tides in the Solar System and Beyond
To those of us living near a coastline, the tides are a familiar celestial cycle. We directly experience ocean tides resulting from the cosmic ballet of Earth and Moon, but much more extreme tidal interactions happen elsewhere in our Solar System. Dr. Hamer will discuss why tides happen, and show examples of tides in the universe. Beyond our Solar System, tides may actually spell destruction for giant planets orbiting very close to their stars.

Jacob Hamer
Dr. Hamer is Assistant Curator of Planetarium Education at the NJ State Museum. He received his BA in Physics and Mathematics from CUNY Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College. During his undergraduate studies he conducted research on galaxies at the American Museum of Natural History. He received his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University, where he carried out research on the interactions between close-in exoplanets and their host stars.

A look ahead at future guest speakers:

Date	Featured Speaker	Topic
July-August	No Monthly Meetings
September 9, 2025	Edwin L. Turner Emeritus Professor of Astrophysical Sciences Princeton University elt@astro.princeton.edu	“Why a Universe Devoid of Extraterrestrial Life is Quite Plausible”   A discussion of why there’s little foundation for the popular expectation that life in the universe may be common.
October 14, 2025	Becka Phillipson Assistant Professor in Physics Villanova University rebecca.phillipson@villanova.edu	Prof. Phillipson is an astrophysicist who leverages statistics, nonlinear dynamics, and machine learning to study the explosive and highly variable characteristics of exotic astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars. Thanks to Bill Thomas for suggesting this speaker.
November 11, 2025	Romain Teyssier Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and Applied and Computational Mathematics Princeton University teyssier@princeton.edu	Prof. Teyssier’s main research activity is to perform simulations of cosmic structure using supercomputers in order to understand the origins of stars and galaxies.

The YouTube recording of May’s AAAP meeting featuring Princeton Professor James Stone has been edited and uploaded for public viewing. Visit AAAP’s YouTube channel for recordings of monthly meetings going back several years.

As always, members’ comments and suggestions are gratefully accepted and much appreciated. Thanks to Ira Polans and Dave Skitt for setting up the online links and connecting the meeting to the world outside Peyton Hall.

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