LVAAS General Meeting at Muhlenberg College

Synopsis: The search for potentially habitable worlds within our Solar System capable of harboring microbial life leads to the subsurface ocean worlds of the outer Solar System, and especially Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa. These hypotheses are based upon data available from ground based and space-based observatories (Hubble, Keck, JWST) and the Cassini and Galileo Missions to Saturn and Jupiter, respectively.

This presentation will have two major parts. The first will examine the available observational, radar, gravitometric, and magnetographic data and hypotheses supporting the potential for habitable conditions in the presumptive subsurface ocean of Europa, and the energy sources and convective processes impacting the moon’s geology and subsurface dynamics. The second part will focus on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission launched in October 2024 to address the fundamental questions of Europa’s habitability. Europa Clipper is the largest and most technologically sophisticated mission launched by NASA. Details of the spacecraft’s design, its scientific mission objectives, instrument package, and unique engineering and orbital dynamics to enable its 3.5 year, 49 flybys discovery mission of Europa while enduring harsh radiation will be discussed, along with other aspects currently en route to the Jovian system for an April 2030 arrival. If successful, the discoveries of NASA’s Clipper mission to Europa and ESA’s JUICE mission to Ganymede and Callisto will make the decades of the 2030s and beyond ones of unprecedented space exploration discovery, likely answering the fundamental question of habitability on alien worlds within our own Solar System.

Bruce Ruggeri, PhD has spent his career in oncology and cancer research for 32 years in academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Although his professional career has been in biomedical sciences, he has been an astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration enthusiast for five decades. He has organized regional speaking events and volunteer outreach for The Planetary Society and is a member of the National Space Society. In February 2025, Bruce became a NASA Solar System Ambassador and is actively engaged in volunteer outreach and educational activities for those interested in astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration.

Founded in 1957, the Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomical Society (LVAAS) is one of the oldest continuously-operating amateur astronomy organizations in the U.S. The mission of LVAAS is to promote the study of Astronomy and to maintain meeting spaces, observatories, and a planetarium.

LVAAS operates two astronomy sites: The South Mountain site in Salisbury Township is the headquarters of the Society. It has a planetarium with a Spitz A3P projector, a 21-foot dome, meeting space, the Red Shift store, library, workshop space, and three observatories. The Pulpit Rock site near Hamburg is LVAAS's members-only dark sky site. At 1,600 feet above sea level, the site features five observatories and a pad for members' scopes.

Members who receive training on the scopes may obtain keys to the observatories. LVAAS also maintains a rental "fleet" of telescopes that members may rent at low cost. Members also receive access to The Observer, our online newsletter, as well as reduced subscription prices to Sky and Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. If you want to learn more about astronomy and LVAAS, please join us at our next public star party.

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