Chiefland Astronomy

Registration

Registration is now open at https://chieflandastro.regfox.com/astrofest-2026. Please register soon to ensure you have the kind of site that works for you. Last year, we sold out of all RV by August. Also, please note that early registration will end on September 30, 2026. Late registration fees are 20% higher.

Food Vendor

We hope to have our very popular food vendor since 2024 return and will post more information as we get closer to Astrofest.

Star Party Shirts

We will design new shirts for Astrofest 2026.

If you are interested in purchasings one of our shirts from Astrofest 2025, they are still available at: https://www.bonfire.com/chieflandastrofest2025/

Speakers

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Adam Ginsburg, University of Florida “The Galactic Center”

About the Speaker: Dr. Ginsburg began his career as an undergraduate at Rice University, earning a B.S. in Astrophysics, in 2007. He went on to earn his PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Colorado in 2013. He was a European Southern Observatory (ESO) fellow in Garching, Germany from 2013 to 2016 then was a Jansky fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico from 2016 to 2019 before coming to the University of Florida.

Dr. Ginsburg studies the formation of the most massive stars and how their formation process affects their neighbors, with the aim of understanding what physical processes control the stellar initial mass function. He uses primarily radio and millimeter telescopes to measure the molecular interstellar medium, which is the gas phase from which stars form. Turbulence and chemistry are the two most important and least understood processes that affect both how the stars form and how we detect their birth environments, so his research includes these fields by necessity. He is also interested in the maintenance and development of new tools to facilitate observational astronomy and comparison between simulations and observations.

His areas of expertise include High-mass Star Formation, Radio and Millimeter Astronomy, Molecular Interstellar Medium (ISM), Turbulence in the ISM, Astrochemistry and Astronomical Software Development.