No featured speaker this year
NCAM is an annual technical meeting that seeks to bring members of the N.C. professional astronomy community together to network and share research. The meeting usually draws 50-75 attendees from institutions around North Carolina and surrounding states. For the past two decades, NCAM has been held annually in late September or early October and usually includes a plenary presentation from an invited researcher, short oral sessions scheduled throughout the day, and space for research posters. We especially encourage presentations of student research. The meeting also usually includes special sessions related to regional light pollution efforts, strategies for teaching undergraduate astronomy courses, and other timely topics.
There is no registration fee for the NCA meeting, but we ask that all participants register using the form linked below, so that we can set the agenda of presentations and get a reasonably accurate headcount for ordering refreshments and printing programs. There will be a sign-in table in the lobby of the conference venue.
The meeting is in the Koury Hospitality Careers Building on the Jamestown campus of GTCC. Koury is building 19 on the Jamestown campus map. Its physical address is 621 E. Main St, Jamestown, NC, 27282. Park in Lot F.
There are plenty of hotels around the area. Use the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau website to find accommodations if you plan to stay overnight.
If you would like to present an oral or display presentation at NCAM, please register using the link above. (If you have questions contact Tom English at trenglish@gtcc.edu or 336-334-4822, ext. 50023.)
Display panel space will be available for 15 to 20 posters.
The proposed plan is for standard oral presentations to be 10 minutes including Q&A, though this could change, depending on the number of submissions. After you submit the registration form (see link above), you should receive confirmation of receipt within a day of submission. If not, call or e-mail Tom English at at trenglish@gtcc.edu or 336-334-4822, ext. 50023.
Download the 2023 NCAM program with abstracts (PDF).
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 9 a.m. | Conference Opens: refreshments, set up posters, networking |
| 9 a.m. | Special Session: NC Community College Astronomy 8-week Course |
| 10:15 a.m. | Announcements |
| About 10:30 a.m. | Contributed Oral Session I (short talks) |
| About noon | Lunch break |
| Time TBA | Special Session: Sustainability of Astronomy Programs in the Era of Academic Program Reviews |
| Time TBA | Contributed Oral Session II (short talks) |
| 3:00 p.m. | Regional Teaching Exchange |
The meeting should conclude by about 4 p.m. (will depend on the number of short talks registered).
Click here to watch a video of this presentation.
The 2024 Plenary Speaker/Topic will be announced soon.
Rogier Windhorst, Arizona State University/JWST, "Chasing the Reionizers of the Early Universe." Click here to watch a video of this presentation.
Rebekah Dawson, Penn State University, "Multifaceted Views of Exoplanet Systems"
Shep Doeleman, Harvard Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics/EHT, “Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope”
NCAM canceled due to the COVID -19 Pandemic
Cathy Olkin, Southwest Research Institute, “What we have learned about Pluto and the Kuiper Belt from NASA’s New Horizons Mission”
Gabriela González, Louisiana State University/LIGO, “Gravitational Waves Astronomy”
John Mather, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “From the Big Bang to the End of the Universe, and How We’ll Learn More with the James Webb Space Telescope”
David Charbonneau, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “The Compositions of Small Planets”
Sean Solomon, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory/Columbia Univ., “MESSENGER at Mercury: Technical Challenges and Implications for the Formation of the Inner Planets.”
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, University of Oxford, “Reflections on the Discovery of Pulsars”
Don Winget, University of Texas at Austin, “A Close-up Look at White Dwarf Stars: From Kiloparsecs to Centimeters”
Robert A. Benjamin, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, “How to Map the Milky Way”
Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “IceCube: Particle Astrophysics with High Energy Neutrinos”
Giovanni Fazio, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “Observing the High Redshift (z > 5) Universe with the Spitzer Space Telescope”
Hal Levison, Southwest Research Institute, “The Early Dynamical Evolution of the Outer Solar System: A Nice Story”
Neil Gehrels, NASA Goddard, “Gamma Ray Burst Discoveries with the Swift Mission”
Michael Turner, University of Chicago, “Cosmic Acceleration: New Gravitational Physics or Mysterious Dark Energy”
Special Panel Discussion: The past 10 years in Astronomy and a Look to the Coming Decade
Moderated by Robert Naeye (NASA Goddard)
Panel: Jay Bergstralh (NASA Langley), Bruce Carney (UNC-Chapel Hill), Prasun Desai (NASA Langley), Virginia Trimble (U. Cal.-Irvine), Michael Turner (U. Chicago), John Wood (NASA Goddard)
Scott Ransom, NOAO-Charlottesville, “A Millisecond Pulsar (and Basic Physics) Bonanza with the GBT”
Jeff Hester, Arizona State University, “Understanding Our Origins: Formation of Sun-like Stars in Massive Star Environments”
Paul Butler, Carnegie Institution, “Extrasolar Planets”
Prasun Desai, NASA Langley, “2003 Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Return to the Surface”
Steve Murray, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/Chandra, “Chandra 101: X-ray Astronomy Made Easy”