2025 Activity Calendar

More Interest Group activities can be found on the Interest Groups link.

April 15 (Noon – 2:00 PM): Spring Luncheon. Bring non-perishable food donations and drop off in the lobby prior to our luncheon, to support the UT Outpost (on-campus food pantry and career closet for currently enrolled students at UT Austin). Individual donations of gently used professional clothing can be arranged by appointment (https://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sos/utoutpost.php)
April 25, 11:00 AM: UT Remembers (Main Mall). This program recognizes and celebrates the contributions of students, faculty, staff and retirees who died in the previous year, with flag-lowering and name-reading. (https://utremembers.utexas.edu/)
April 29 – May 7: Mystical Peru (Travel Group)

May 14, 2025, 1:30 PM: Dr. Phil Kelton, “Touring the Universe with an AI-Driven Smart Telescope from near Mopac and 2222”, Howson Library Branch, 2500 Exposition. This talk is about astronomy, application-specific artificial intelligence software, and other modern enabling technology. Phil has lived in the same house near Mopac and 2222 for 45 years and has used a variety of telescopes to observe many interesting astronomical objects. During that time Austin’s light pollution has increased dramatically and made observing the sky ever more difficult. Lately Phil has been using a new and very sophisticated AI-driven smart telescope, enabling him to easily observe from his light polluted yard objects that used to require much larger telescopes, dark sites and a more difficult manual mode of operation. Phil will demonstrate the basics of how this all works and show images of many interesting objects in the sky obtained with this new smart telescope that applies AI software to astronomical observing to overcome the negative effects of light pollution.