CPC Astronomers' Meeting

45th Annual Central Pennsylvania Consortium Astronomers’ Meeting

Saturday, April 18th, 2026 | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Gettysburg College | Masters Hall
300 N. Washington Street, Gettysburg PA 17325

Overview

Gettysburg College will host the 45th Annual Central Pennsylvania Consortium Astronomers’ Meeting on Saturday, April 18th, 2026.

The conference will be held in Masters Hall.

We encourage both faculty and students to consider presenting a talk or poster in astronomy, astrophysics and astronomy education. We have been able to allocate 10-15 minutes for each presentation, depending on the number of people who would like to present. We wish to remind everyone that this is a “student friendly” conference. A tentative meeting agenda will be provided below.

Questions can be directed to Dr. Ryan Johnson.

Registration

Please register for the conference by filling out the web form. There is no registration fee and all students, postdocs, faculty and members of the astronomical community are welcome to attend.

The deadline is Friday April 3rd, 2026.

Schedule for 2026 CPC Astronomers' Meeting

Time	Event
8:30 – 9:00 A.M.	Registration / Breakfast
9:00 – 9:10 A.M.	Welcoming Remarks by Dr. Ryan Johnson, Gettysburg College
9:10 – 10:50 A.M.	Talks
10:50 – 11:10 A.M.	Morning Break
11:10 – 12:10 P.M.	Invited Talk Keynote Speaker: Dr. Carey Lisse, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory “The SPHEREx Mission: Design and Early Results”
12:10 – 1:00 P.M.	Lunch
1:00 – 1:30 P.M.	Poster Session
1:30 – 2:30 P.M.	Talks
2:30 – 2:45 P.M.	Afternoon Break
2:45 – 3:45 P.M.	Talks
3:45 P.M.	Concluding Remarks

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Carey Lisse

Planetary Astronomer; Stellar Astrophysicist; Infrared Spectroscopist
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Title

The SPHEREx Mission: Design and Early Results

Abstract

SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is a new NASA mission launched into low-Earth, Sunsynchronous orbit (altitude ^≈ 675 km) on 11-Mar-2025 UT (DorÅLe et al. 2016, 2018; Bock et al. 2025). Conducting a 102-band near-infrared spectro-photometric survey of the entire sky over the course of 2 years, it was designed primarily to study (1) inflationary cosmology, (2) the history of galaxy formation, and (3) the abundance of astrobiologically important molecular ices in planet-forming regions. SPHEREx will observe and catalog measurements of everything along a line of sight on the sky— from local solar system objects (asteroids, comets, planets, KBOs) to main sequence stars, to distant quasars. In this talk we will describe the SPHEREx spacecraft, mission, survey, and show some early results from SPHEREx observations of asteroids, comets, interstellar objects, stars, star forming regions, planetary nebulae, the ISM, and galaxies.

Bio

Dr. Carey Lisse has over 40 years of experience in experimental and observational research that includes studies in astrophysics, detector physics, (bio)chemical physics, optics, electronics, and remote sensing data analysis. Receiving his PhD in Physics from University of Maryland in 1992,

Dr. Lisse comes to us most recently as a Principal Research Scientist at John’s Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. There, his research has centered around the study of objects in and around our, and other, star systems. Dr. Lisse has also been a key member of several important space science missions, including the COBE satellite, Deep Impact, Spitzer, New Horizons, Interstellar Probe, and SPHEREx. In support of these space missions, his work focuses primarily on infrared spectroscopy of young stellar systems, dust, and objects that reside in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

Schedule of Talks

	Time	Details
01	9:10 – 9:30 A.M.	Somaeh Khakpash, Lehigh University “Automatic Generation of Magnification Maps for Lensed Quasars and Supernovae”
02	9:30 – 9:50 A.M.	Matthew Motuz and Adrianna Campisi - Lycoming College “Moons Can Survive Stellar Engulfment”
03	9:50 – 10:10 A.M.	Fronefield Crawford, Franklin & Marshall College “Undergraduate Engagement in the Quest to Detect Gravitational Waves with Radio Pulsars”
04	10:10 – 10:30 A.M.	Will Nguyen, Franklin & Marshall College “Preparing Rotation Slicing for Contribution to Astropy”
05	10:30 – 10:50 A.M.	Ethan Maher, Lehigh University “Can Chebyshev Polynomials help find Planetary Gravitational Microlensing Signals?”
06	1:30 – 1:50 P.M.	Graham Doskoch, West Virginia University “Timing and statistical analysis of single-pulse search pulsar discoveries from the PALFA survey”
07	1:50 – 2:10 P.M.	Yaman Acharya, Gettysburg College “Decaying Dark Matter as a Possible Solution for Cosmological Tensions”
08	2:10 – 2:30 P.M.	Maroua Guerroumi & Omar Cedron Ruiz, Drexel University “Ice Cube Citizen Science with Accuracy and Time Cuts”
09	2:45 – 3:05 P.M.	Niel Brandt, Penn State “The Rubin Observatory’s LSST AGN Science Collaboration: Industrial-Scale Studies of Supermassive Black Hole Growth”
10	3:05 – 3:25 P.M.	Emma Martignon, Annafy Hossain, and Keilah Makosi “Feasibility of Lunar Cosmic Ray Tomography”
11	3:25 – 3:45 P.M.	Zhibo Yu, Penn State University “The Drivers of the Decline in Supermassive Black Hole Growth at z < 2”

List of Posters Presentations


01	Poster Session	Kim Herrmann, Penn State Mont Alto “Stellar Surface Brightness Profiles: Dwarfs to Spirals” Kim Herrmann, Penn State Mont Alto “Amidst the Beauty of the Night Sky, Which of the Constellations am I?”
02	Poster Session	Shawaiz Tabassum, West Virginia University “GREENSBURT Survey of Single Pulses from Millisecond Pulsars”
03	Poster Session	Timothy Faerber, West Virginia University “Expansion in 35 HII regions traced by SOFIA [CII] Emission”
04	Poster Session	Steve Conrad and Roxanne Kamin, Second Light Observatory Services (SLOS) “Providing Volunteer Skilled Labor to Mid-Atlantic Observatories”
05	Poster Session	Peiyuan Zhou, Penn State University “Incidence Rate of Radio and X-ray AGNs and their Dependence on Stellar Mass, Star Formation Rate, Redshift, and Radio Luminosity”
06	Poster Session	Aditiya Dhar, Loujain Ahmed - Temple University and Gabriella Lanza - West Chester University “Did Summer 2025 Glitches Change the Pulses Detected from the Crab Pulsar?”
07	Poster Session	Anala Kavumkandathil Sreekumar, West Virginia University “Interpretation of Dispersion Measure variations in the NANOGrav 15yr Dataset”
08	Poster Session	Millia Claire Martinez, Dickinson College “Building a Cosmic Ice Experiment at a Small Liberal Arts College”
09	Poster Session	Sarah Bach, Lycoming College “Creating a Catalog of Over 1800 Classified AGN”
10	Poster Session	Aidan Trone, Lehigh University “Simulation of Stellar Streams from Globular Clusters in the Milky Way”
11	Poster Session	Luis Otero, Lycoming College “Tracing Dual AGN Evolution Across Cosmic Time: Galaxy Mergers and SMBH Growth in IllustrisTNG-50”
12	Poster Session	Juliette Toneatto, Lehigh University “Characterizing Microlensing Parallax Using Chebyshev Polynomials”
13	Poster Session	Quinn Sullivan, Penn State University “Using Machine Learning to Select Active Galactic Nuclei in the Rubin LSST Deep-Drilling Fields”