New State laws make it impossible to get approval for a class on which you overlap another class unless the overlap period is less than 10 minutes. We have therefore changed the official pre-trip meeting time from Thursday Sept 13 5pm backwards to Saturday Sept 8 at 9am in room 705, because there were too many conflicts. If you CANNOT make the Saturday time (tomorrow!), you may still come at the Thursday time and get the maps, lecture, food decisions and carpooling info. However, that's right before the trip leaves the following day and so that makes it tight. I encourage everyone to, if at all possible, come to the Saturday meeting. The larger the majority of people we get at the Saturday meeting, the more efficiently we can help with any necessary carpooling. The last date to add is still Thursday Sept 13, not Saturday, so that is also important to note!! As of now, Friday Sept 7, there is still space in the class - if you want to add. email me at rinolthe on the cabrillo server: cabrillo.edu and we'll get you in as quickly as possible. There is still a $10 camping fee which must be paid to the bookstore or bank. You need permission to register which only I can give, after you pay your camping fee or promise to pay your fee before class starts.
The class will be a concentrated weekend of high-powered astronomy at Mt. Lassen Volcanic National Park. Mt. Lassen anchors the southern end of the Cascade Mountain Range. We'll explore planetary science by day, exploring the processes which dominate the geology of the inner planets and the Earth in particular.
Saturday morning, we'll tour of the Allen Telescope Array - this is the array of radio telescopes designed to search for signals from extra-terrestrial intelligence on planets around stars in our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy.
At night, we'll be camping at Hat Creek campground on Hat Creek, just outside Mt. Lassen National Park. We've stayed here three times before, and had exciting and memorable trips on our past Astro 28's here. This page will grow as the date approaches. For now, check out the photos from our past Astro 28 courses here... Astro 28H in '03, Astro 28P in '05, and Astro 28U in '09. The skies here are among the darkest in California, and we'll be able to study the star formation regions, star clusters, giant molecular clouds, and globular clusters which dominate the summer evening sky as we face the center of our Milky Way Galaxy from our sun's vantage point near the outer edge.
Saturday morning, those desiring to have me prepare your breakfast, will enjoy my famous French Crepes breakfast to start the day, we'll then drive the ~10 miles to the SETI Institute telescope array. In the afternoon, we'll drive into Lassen National Park (map) and hike around one of the lakes, have mico-lectures on planetary science and volcanism in the solar system as we work our way towards Bumpass Hell's boiling 
fumaroles by late in the day. Study up on the geothermals of Lassen here. We expect scenes like at left. With bad luck, maybe like this. Saturday night we'll cook a group dinner, and then settle in for a night under the stars observing and lecturing on the evolution of stars from birth to death, study Saturn and Mars in the telescope as well as the many objects making up the Milky Way 
Galaxy. We'll have giant 12" and 25" Dobsonian telescopes, and a high power Meade 8" scope for planetary nebulae and the evening planets for our studies.
Sunday morning I'll cook you a breakfast of scrambled eggs and veges, then head to Subway lava tube, one of the largest and most famous of these strange structures in the world, and continue our lectures of the formation of the Cascades and volcanic landforms.
Field Notes on Planetary Geology
Syllabus (check back for live link)
Course Schedule (check back for live link)
