FW: Free Public Talk on Pluto's Moon at Foothill College May 15th; SkeptiCAL Convention June 9; Textbook Update
Melinda Weil
From: Andrew Fraknoi [mailto:frakno...@fhda.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2019 8:42 AM
To: foothill...@gmail.com
Subject: Free Public Talk on Pluto's Moon at Foothill College May 15th; SkeptiCAL Convention June 9; Textbook Update
Please help us get the word out about these two events , and note the brief free textbook update at the end.
1) On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 7 pm, Dr. Ross Beyer, of the SETI Institute, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:
”Charon, Pluto’s Companion: What We’re Learning from New Horizons”
in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos.
The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series at Foothill College, now in its 19th year.
Pluto’s large moon Charon turned out to be far more interesting than astronomers expected. Pluto was the star of the New Horizons show, but the features on Charon’s surface tell a fascinating tale of how icy worlds could form far from the gravitational influences of the giant planets. There is evidence of a world-wide sub-surface ocean early on, and of global expansion as that ocean froze solid. Charon’s surface also has a region of plains where icy materials may once have flowed and smoothed over the fractures present elsewhere on its surface. Dr. Beyer will be your guide through this story of formation and change in the frozen reaches of the outer Solar System.
Dr. Ross Beyer is a Planetary Scientist with the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center. His interests include surface features, surface processes, remote sensing, and photography of the solid bodies in our Solar System—if you can stand on it, he's interested in what it's like and how it got that way. He was a Participating Scientist with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, he serves as a Co-Investigator with the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and has worked to help certify safe landing sites for Mars landers and rovers starting with Spirit and Opportunity. He is also a member of the New Horizons Science Team that explored the Pluto System and is currently exploring in the Kuiper Belt.
Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos.
For directions and parking information, see: foothill.edu/parking.
For a campus map, see: foothill.edu/map.
The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* The Foothill College Physical Science Division
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
* NASA’s Ames Research Center.
We get large crowds for these talks, so we ask people to try to arrive a little bit early to find parking. The lecture is free, but there is a charge of $3 for parking on campus and exact change is appreciated.
Past lectures in the series can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/SVAstronomyLectures
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2) Announcing:
SkeptiCAL (Skeptics) Convention Near San Francisco Airport on June 9th
You are cordially invited to attend the annual California Skeptics conference, held this year not far from SFO, on Sunday June 9th.
Discussions will include Dr. Lynn Rothschild on whether there is a universal biology, and Glenn Branch on the rise of flat-earth theory.
For full information and registration details, including youth scholarships, please see:
Also on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/skepticalcon/
Check the top menu on this site for background, schedules, costs, maps, etc.
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3) Free Astronomy Textbook Passes 200,000 Mark
Over 200,000 students in the U.S. have now used the free, introductory, open-source textbook, Astronomy, published by the national, non-profit OpenStax project at Rice University. (The book is part of a program, supported by several large foundations, to make introductory textbooks in all fields available to students without charge, and thus reduce the mounting costs of a college education.) The book can be read or downloaded in a number of different formats, including on-line, PDF, Ibooks, Kindle, etc. at: http://openstax.org/details/astronomy The senior authors are A. Fraknoi, D. Morrison, and S. Wolff, and about 70 other astronomers participated in the production and vetting of the book.
Among the resources available for registered adopters (registration is free) is a new test bank that includes over 1100 multiple choice questions, many of which require thinking about what students learned in new contexts (and not just regurgitation of factoids.) Although everything is open source, we ask instructors to respect the security of the test bank and not post any of the questions on websites accessible to students or the public.
The book is also accompanied by an Open Education Resource Hub, where free ancillary materials by the authors and by your colleagues are shared. Some 30 different resources are already available, including a subject listing of free short videos for Astro 101, a listing of free lab manuals and lab activities, resources for teaching more about the contribution of women to astronomy, a detailed primer for new instructors, a guide to the free Stellarium planetarium software, and much more. Just go to the Instructor Resources Tab at the above website.
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Andrew Fraknoi
Emeritus Chair, Astronomy Department
Foothill College
(Currently teaching at U. of San Francisco & San Francisco State U.)
415-484-5350 (voice mail)
E-mail: frakno...@fhda.edu
Web site: www.fraknoi.com
AstroProf Facebook Pages: www.facebook.com/Fraknoi