AstroAssembly 2009

"Restoring the Clark Weight Drive Governor"
Al started his professional career as a Thin-Films Process Engineer for Electro-Films Inc in Warwick, Rhode Island in 1981. He then moved on to become a Senior. Payload Mechanical Systems Design Engineer for Hughes Space & Communications in El Segundo, California in 1996. Al then became the First Product Design Engineer for Orion Telescopes & Binoculars in Watsonville, CA. Later, Al left Orion Telescopes to work for the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separator Project (AVLIS) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Al is currently employed as a Senior Opto-Mechanical Systems design engineer for JDS Uniphase in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Al is the current President of the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford (ASGH) and a keyholding member of Van Vleck Observatory’s 20” Clark Refractor Public Observing Committee at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Al has been a member Skyscrapers for over 30 Years and been building and using telescopes since he was 8 years old. Al was the youngest keyholder of Seagrave Memorial Observatory - at 16 years old. Al is also a two-time award winner at the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference at Big Bear Lake in California and a seven-time award winner at the SpringfieldTelescope Makers Stellafane Convention in Springfield , Vermont. Al was also the co-winner of the 2009 Astronomer of the Year Award at Wesleyan University’s StarConn conference. He loves telescope making, astrophotography, and spending clear, dark nights examining the heavens with my friends.

"The (Criminal) Education of Isaac Newton." Professor, Interim Program Head, Director of the Graduate Program Professor Levenson is the winner of the Peabody Award (shared), New York Chapter Emmy, and the AAAS/Westinghouse award. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, Discover, The Sciences. Winner of the 2005 National Academies Communications Award for Origins.

"Strange Cloud Formations on the Terminator of Venus."
Mike Mattei has been an active observer for many decades and a member of ALPO and AAVSO. He worked at Harvard Observatory's Agassiz Station (now Oak Ridge Obs.), and met his future wife (Dr. Janet Akyuz Mattei 1943 -2004) at AAVSO. He became very active in optics and amateur telescope making, and later went professional, specializing in the fabrication of aspherical optics at Space Optics Research Labs, and Optical Systems and Technolgy Inc (O.S.T.I.). There he worked on optics for space exploration such as an Ultraviolet Telescope for Goddard Space Flight Center. Eventually Mike was asked to join the staff at Lincoln Labs to work on special Government 'Star Wars' projects using Laser Imaging Optical Radar Systems. He also worked at MIT's Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. He taught courses at University of Hawaii and spoke at local club events Mike is possibly best known for his hundreds of nights teaching beginners the art and craft of mirror making at the ATMoB workhop in Westford, Massachusetts. He still works full time at Lincoln Labs, and continues to spend his nights searching for Novae for the AAVSO in his home-built observatory in Littleton, MA.

"Stress at Yerkes: The Untold Saga of the Largest Refractor on Earth”

George Ellery Hale, the founding director of Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, was burdened with many worries as he pushed tirelessly to develop revolutionary instruments and facilities for astronomy. One particularly serious concern was the newly completed 40-inch objective for the great Yerkes telescope. John W. Briggs, a research engineer based at Yerkes for 14 years, will use never-before-published correspondence between Hale, the pioneering American optician George W. Ritchey, and lensmaster Carl A. R. Lundin of the Alvan Clark & Sons Corporation, to reveal a surprising story of the record-breaking lens that -- grave as the issues were when discovered shortly after the 1897 Yerkes dedication -- remain virtually unknown to this day. The presentation will be extensively illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs.

A native of Massachusetts and the New England amateur astronomy scene, John Briggs recently returned to the Boston area with his family to serve as a Visiting Scholar in Astronomy at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and he has continued teaching as Faculty Astronomer at the Clay Science Center of Dexter and Southfield Schools in Brookline, Massachusetts. John is member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston; the Springfield Telescope Makers of Vermont, and Skyscrapers, Inc., of Seagrave Observatory. He has worked at research observatories as far ranging as Venezuela, Hawaii, the Canary Islands, and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, as well as California and the American Southwest. He recently returned to Yerkes in July, 2009, when he conducted optical tests of the 40-inch objective in connection with a new project by solar astronomers at Colorado’s High Altitude Observatory to build a 60-inch coronagraphic refractor. Throughout his adventures as a teacher, observer, and instrumentalist, John has maintained a strong interest in the history of astronomy, and his presentations are entertaining.

Ronald Florence will be exploring how the 200 Mount Palomar Telescope got designed, the interplay between individual geniuses and the beginnings of large science. It was a very different dynamic than much of science today, and raises some interesting questions about whether the institutions and bureaucracy of big science inhibit innovation.

The Perfect Machine was the inspiration for the PBS Series The Journey to Palomar, which traces the epic personal and professional quest of the Chicago-born astronomer George Ellery Hale to build the four largest telescopes of the 20th century, culminating with the 20-year effort to build the million-pound telescope on Palomar Mountain, a project considered the "moon shot" of the 1930s and 1940s.

Ronald Florence is a historian and novelist. He was educated at Berkeley and Harvard, where he received a PhD in French and German history. Before turning to full-time writing, he taught at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence College, and SUNY; was a senior researcher at the Century Foundation; and was executive director of the New York Council for the Humanities.