The College of the Canyons Canyon Country campus will host the 12th edition of its popular Star Party event, inviting students and community members to experience the beautiful complexity of the universe, while participating in an educational program designed to immerse students in the science of the stars.

The fall 2015 Star Party will take place from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, in the campus’ Carl A. Rasmussen Amphitheater. The campus is located at 17200 Sierra Highway.

As always, the evening will include a variety of interactive displays, exhibits, experiments and demonstrations presented by the college’s chemistry, geology, astronomy and physics departments, among others.

This semester’s event will focus on the theme of ‘Innovation’ while exploring the innovative techniques and tools used to research the world and universe around us.

Included will be a special presentation from Dr. Luisa Rebull, research astronomer at the Infrared Science Archive and Spitzer Science Center at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at California Institute of Technology.

Rebull’s research focuses on the formation of young, low-mass stars throughout the galaxy using infrared space-based telescopes, as well as many other telescopes and other wavelengths.

Her presentation entitled “More Than Your Eyes Can See: Infrared Light” will share information about what can be learned by studying all the wavelengths of light.

Star Party attendees will also have the chance to gaze at the stars through a collection of telescopes set up for public use. In addition, a ‘Tallest Tower’ building competition will be included among the night’s events.

“The Star Party remains a beloved community event at the Canyon Country campus, celebrating so much of what we love about this amazing facility,” said Ryan Theule, Vice President of the Canyon Country campus. “The event highlights the open skies and instructional excellence offered here and showcases the amazing mix of talent found among our students, faculty and staff. This fun, family-friendly format always makes for a fun night!”

The Star Party event is free and open to the public. Students, families and community members alike are encouraged to attend the event and bring blankets and lawn chairs along with them. Food and beverages will also be available for purchase on site.

For more information about the fall 2015 Canyon Country campus Star Party please call (661) 362-3800 or visit www.canyons.edu/ccc. 

More About Luisa Rebull

From CalTech

I’ve always wanted to be an astronomer, ever since I was very little. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, where my favorite museum, no contest, was the National Air and Space Museum. As a kid, I was a “NASA junkie,” collecting NASA lithographs, which was how NASA made “pretty pictures” available to the public before the web. I was born after Apollo 11, but the sheer coolness of NASA things was indescribable, and the images from Voyager mission hit me at just the right time to really entrance me.

As a girl interested in science and technology, sometimes I felt a little left out. In kindergarten, for the after-Christmas show-and-tell, I was in tears because I was the only little girl who didn’t bring in a doll — I brought my motorized Lego set, which I hadn’t put down since I got it. (I had received dolls, but they were still in their plastic packaging!) Sometime in mid-elementary school, I learned astronomers needed math, and somehow I decided that of course girls can’t do math! It took me until college(!) to get over that. I went to William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA because it was good in a lot of different things — I figured if I didn’t like physics, I’d major in chemistry or maybe even history. Much to my surprise, I did like physics, and I was pretty good at it. (I ended up taking a lot of Colonial American history too.) I went to grad school in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. In college, math was a tool to be gotten through as soon as possible so you could get to the physics, and in graduate school, physics was a tool to be gotten through as soon as possible so you could get to the astrophysics! (That doesn’t mean that I find these things easy, just that they are something to be gotten through as soon as possible… sort of like brussels sprouts…)

I do research on young stars all over our Galaxy, using Spitzer as well as many other telescopes. I’ve spent a particularly large amount of time studying variability of young stars, which in many cases is driven by stellar rotation. Without rotation, stars don’t have magnetic fields, and without magnetic fields, the Sun would be as boring as most people think it is. I have studied rotation of young stars primarily in and around the Orion Nebula Cluster (the fuzzy patch in the sword) and NGC 2264. These “teenage” stars will grow up to be stars like our Sun, and exactly how fast they rotate may have something to do with whether or not they are forming planets. I had a Spitzer press release in 2006 about some Spitzer results on this topic. Separately, I also have done some work on the chemical abundances of these young stars as well as some of the oldest stars in our Galaxy.

In addition to all of the science I learned in grad school, I also learned that I enjoy sharing what I do with the general public. I feel strongly that since taxpayers help pay for my salary, that they deserve to find out what I do in terms that they can understand. I’ve done lots of education and public outreach things, but a unifying theme is working with the general public and/or teachers (not so much working in a classroom). I volunteered at Adler Planetarium and worked with the CARA Space Explorers. I helped found an organization that brought the internet (T-1 lines) to 29 inner-city schools around the University; it continues to work with the teachers to enhance teaching and learning through the use of the internet and other computer technologies. In 2005, I started with what was then known as the Spitzer Spitzer Teachers Project. This program partnered small groups of educators with a research astronomer for a year-long research project. In 2009, it got retooled and reorganized into the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Project (NITARP), and I became its director. I have worked with several different teams on several different projects — see the NITARP website for details.

After grad school, before working for Spitzer, I had what was then called an NRC Fellowship (now they are NASA fellowships) to be a postdoctoral fellow at JPL with Mike Werner. Given Mike’s dedication to Spitzer, perhaps it was not surprising that I went to work for Spitzer!

I came to the Spitzer Science Center in 2003. I have been a member of both the MIPS Instrument Support Team and the Observer Support Team; now I am part of the Community Affairs Team. What that means in practice is that we are the interface between the observatory and the astronomical community (as opposed to the general public). Our primary job is to run the proposal calls in which astronomers from all over the world submit ideas for things to look at with Spitzer — usually they ask for about 5 times as much observing time as there is available, so about 100 astronomers get together and argue for a week as to what 20% of the stuff we should do. The Community Affairs Team does other smaller things too, but running that process is most of what we do. I am also the Spitzer Archive Scientist, and as a result of that job, a significant part of my job is working for the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). IRSA is NASA’s home for infrared data from many different missions and telescopes. We have to make all of these data easily accessible and usable by the worldwide astronomical community. My job title is Associate Research Scientist. (There are two tracks here: research [50% science, 50% project] and staff [20% science, 80% project]. There are three ranks within each track: Assistant, Associate, and Senior. So, roughly speaking, I’m an associate professor kind of rank — whereas a professor’s service work is to spend time teaching, my service work is to support the observatory.

My husband is also an astronomer — we met in grad school at the University of Chicago. In July 2008, I gave birth to a little boy, who is proving to be a lot of fun, if exhausting! As any working mother does, I am continually trying to figure out how to be a supermommy. I enjoy travelling places as part of my job and try to take time off to see places I go. I read lots of mysteries and some science fiction. I love reading about other scientists’ results in paleontology, ancient Egyptian archeology, and colonial American history. I do needlework and make jewelry, and other craft projects. I love to bake!

Since I grew up in the DC area, of course I am a huge football fan. Originally I rooted only for the Redskins (and of course whoever’s playing the Cowboys!). While in Chicago, though, I learned the way the true game of football is played, in open-air stadiums, in the depths of December, with 40 mph gales whipping off a frozen-over lake, driving the wind chill way down. Only real teams play like this, in the black-and-blue division! The Bears struggled while I was there, but wow, I enjoyed the Packers. My time in Chicago also coincided with Michael Jordan playing for the Bulls for their run of 5 championships. This made it easy to learn to like basketball too!