Speakers
Keynote: Charlie Bracken
“Capturing Every Object Worth Imaging”
Charlie Bracken describes his quest to research, capture, and process over 1700 deep-sky objects for his book, The Astrophotographer’s Universe. He discusses lessons learned, including: What makes a good object? Will you ever run out of objects to image? Which objects are most overlooked by astrophotographers and why?
Biography: Charlie is the author of several books on astrophotography, including The Deep-sky Imaging Primer, The Astrophotography Sky Atlas, The Astrophotography Planner, The Visible Universe, and The Astrophotographer’s Universe. He has been imaging for over 15 years, and he has lectured on astrophotography globally, helping people get the best out of their equipment and skies. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and also images via remote setups in Utah and Chile. You can find him on Astrobin (CharlesBracken) and his website is digitalstars.wordpress.com.
Larry McHenry
“Observing Wolf-Rayet Shells”
I’m always looking for new and interesting observing projects of objects that I’ve never seen before. A few years back I became aware that a type of star called Wolf-Rayets can generate shells and bubbles of gas and dust, similar to planetary nebula. These objects run from easily located extended disks showing great detail to challenging faint wisps of nebulosity. So today, I would like to bring these ethereal Wolf-Rayet Shells ‘down to Earth’ by discussing what they are, the historical astronomers behind these objects, and how to go about observing them. Hopefully, when we are done, you will find these mysterious deep-sky objects as interesting to hunt and observe as I do.
Biography: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania resident Larry McHenry has been active in amateur astronomy for over 40 years, and is a member of the Oil Region Astronomical Society (ORAS), in Western Pennsylvania. In addition to having been a regular in-person presenter for many years at both the Cherry Springs Star Party and the Black Forest Star Party, Larry has given past presentations at various regional starparties including AstroBlast, Hidden Hollow, Rochester RocheStar-Fest, Calhoun Stargaze, and Mason-Dixon Star Party, along with the major starparties of Enchanted Skies in New Mexico, Okie-Tex in Oklahoma, Staunton River Star Party in Virginia, and Starfest in Canada. Larry has also given presentations via Zoom to astronomy organizations around the country, including clubs in Boston, Rochester, Atlanta, Grand Junction, Houston, Stockton, Hawaii and Canada. And Larry has published articles in the Astronomical League’s “Reflector” magazine based on his presentations including: “Halton Arp and his Peculiar Galaxies”, “Galileo The First Optical Astronomer”, “The Herschel’s and their Catalog”, and “Edwin Hubble: Surveyor of the Universe”.
One of Larry’s favorite astronomical activities is learning about the historical forefathers of today’s amateur astronomers, and EAA observing their deep-sky objects. You can learn more about Larry’s astronomical interests online at his webportal: http://www.stellar-journeys.
Steve Taylor
“The Very Large Array. How it works, what it does, and how to fix it.”
Steve will give a brief history of the VLA, and more of the VLA’s science, before talking about a “typical” day at the site and then the NgVLA – the follow up project of over 200 antennas, over the whole North American continent, which is currently seeking funding.
Biography: Steve Taylor is a British professional engineer, who was for several years President of the Central PA Observers (CPO). In a late career change, he moved to take up a position as machine shop manager for the VLA radio telescopes in New Mexico. From there he transitioned back into professional engineering and is now a member of the team that keeps the VLA working on science – which it has done essentially for the last 50 years, non-stop.
Dr. Joel Leja
“Surprises at the Dawn of Time from James Webb — A First Look at the First Stars, Galaxies, and Black Holes”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the culmination of thirty years of planning, twenty years of construction, and eleven billion dollars of funding. It is the most expensive and complex astronomical observatory ever built and it was designed specifically to perform the first systematic exploration of stars, galaxies, and black holes in the early universe. Luckily for us, this first systematic exploration is happening right now — in our lives. I will introduce this flagship telescope and discuss some of the early, stunning, and sometimes tentative, discoveries we have made in Webb’s first deep fields, by measuring the ancient first light from galaxies and black holes originating near the edge of the observable universe. I will in particular discuss the new, mysterious, very bright, and seemingly impossible objects at the edge of the universe which have been puzzling all of us: “little red dots”.
Biography: Joel Leja is the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Mid Career Endowed Faculty Chair and an Associate Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University. He researches how galaxies like the Milky Way form over cosmic time, using ground-and space-based telescopes, large cosmic surveys, and supercomputers. He specializes in modeling observations of distant galaxies and in data-intensive methodologies applied to astrophysics, including modeling individual galaxies and galaxy population modeling. Joel received his Ph.D in Astronomy from Yale University under Dr. Pieter van Dokkum in 2016 and was an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian with Dr. Charlie Conroy until 2020. He was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2023, 2024, and 2025 (top 1% of cited researchers in astrophysics), and awarded Yale University’s Brouwer Prize in 2019 for a PhD thesis of unusual merit.