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Paulo has a background in Electrical Engineering with MBA in Big Data and A.I. He has been an amateur astronomer since 9 years old and an active researcher in fields like finance, philosophy and astronomy. His observatory includes a 20in reflector on a HD32 Chronos mount, C14 with Hyperstar, Meade 12ACF with LHIRESIII spectroscope, RC10 for astroimaging, Meade 10 with a DSS7 spectroscope, FLT98 and Z71 APOs, Solar 120mm scope and some others.

He is going to talk about discoveries that were made in his observatory, software he developed for searching transient and asteroid/comets; he will also show some of his astrophotos.

Ron Miller is an author and illustrator specializing in space and astronomy. His work appears regularly in magazines such as Astronomy and Scientific American. He is also the author and illustrator of 70 books, including: Space Art: Starlog Photo Guidebook, Cycles of Fire: Stars, Galaxies, and the Wonder of Deep Space, The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System, The Art of Chesley Bonestell, The History Of Science Fiction, The Art of Space: The History of Space Art, from the Earliest Visions to the Graphics of the Modern Era, and many others. The most recent is Natural Satellites: The Book of Moons, which came out in 2021. He also designed a set of postage stamps celebrating the exploration of the solar system. The "Pluto Not Yet Explored" stamp is attached to the New Horizons spacecraft. It is now in the Guinness Book of World Records as having traveled further than any other stamp in history. He has also worked on motion pictures, probably most notably the David Lynch Dune.

This will be a very interactive session. Ron Miller will begin with an overview of his nearly 50-year career as a space artist, science fiction illustrator and author (which you can read about on Wikipedia) -- what he has done previously as well as his current focus. Then we'll open it up to questions, giving everyone a chance to ask about any aspect of his career you'd like to know more about.

Topic #2: Quantum Tunneling in Nuclear Fusion

Presenter: Arjun Meenashi Sundar

Arjun is 11.8 years old kid. He is in 6th grade and is very interested in Asteroid mining and Quantum Mechanics which are some of his lifetime passions. This is his current desired career path. He also has other interests, such as Visual Arts, playing guitar, and astrophotography, which is a very recent hobby.

Our March 2022 HAL Meeting is coming up Thursday, March 17th beginning at 7:00PM EST.
Note: This will be a Zoom meeting only. We will not be at Robinson Nature Center.

Our primary discussion topic will be "Filters". A panel of experts will discuss what filters to use for both observational astronomy and also for astro-imaging. They will share their knowledge answer all of your questions. Knowing what filters to use for what conditions and objectives will greatly enhance your night-out and solar experiences.

In addition we are going to discuss a new members only platform known as "Discord". Some of you have already been using our Discord server to share information and experiences. We are now ready to roll it out to the membership. And there is more, including our new YouTube Channel and sharing your recent picture submissions.

Some things are possible and some are not. That line between the possible and the impossible can tell us a lot about the way Nature works. In this talk we will ponder a few impossibilities, from the notorious (time travel, escape from a black hole) to the obscure (quantum cloning), using them to discover some of the physical principles that govern information in our quantum universe. As one might expect upon a journey into wonderland, our constant companion will be Alice -- thanks to her creator Lewis Carroll and her most famous illustrator Sir John Tenniel. Many surprises await beyond the looking-glass of the impossible.

Bio: Dr. Benjamin Schumacher is Professor of Physics at Kenyon College, where he has taught for 20 years. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from The University of Texas at Austin in 1990. Professor Schumacher is the author of numerous scientific papers and two books, including Physics in Spacetime: An Introduction to Special Relativity. As one of the founders of quantum information theory, he introduced the term qubit, invented quantum data compression (also known as Schumacher compression), and established several fundamental results about the information capacity of quantum systems. For his contributions, he won the 2002 Quantum Communication Award, the premier international prize in the field, and was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Besides working on quantum information theory, he has done physics research on black holes, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. Professor Schumacher has spent sabbaticals working at Los Alamos National Laboratory and as a Moore Distinguished Scholar at the Institute for Quantum Information at California Institute of Technology. He has also done research at the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University, the Santa Fe Institute, the Perimeter Institute, the University of New Mexico, the University of Montreal, the University of Innsbruck, and the University of Queensland.

Special presentation by Karen Yaffe Lottes on a historical site that is in our own backyard, the "International Latitude Observatory".

• International Latitude Observatory (Gaithersburg site)
• Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory (Facebook page)
• I am Gaithersburg, and I Measured the Stars – 120 Years Ago! (Facebook article based on magazine article below)
• article in inGaithersburg magazine (see page 8)

Karen Yaffe Lottes is an historian and museum educator at the Gaithersburg Community Museum where she creates informal educational opportunities in history and STEM at the museum and the Latitude Observatory. Her book In Search of Maryland Ghosts: Montgomery County was published in 2013 and she has written for In Gaithersburg Magazine, the Gazette, and other area publications.

Establishing conclusive evidence of hydration on solar system bodies is a key step in gaining a better understanding of our solar system's evolution and present composition. Oppia crater is a location on asteroid Vesta where a hydration feature has been detected but there is no direct evidence/reason for how it got there. This research project hoped to start answering this question.

Dominic is a senior at North County High School in Glen Burnie, MD who will be graduating next month. He has been a very active member of the Mock Trial team as well as the Astronomy Club throughout his high school career. Dominic will be attending college at UMBC right here in Baltimore and plans to study Physics with an emphasis in Astronomy.