The Rio Rancho Astronomical Society will host its January monthly meeting on Friday, January 7th starting at 7:30 PM MST.  The meeting will be a hybrid meeting both at Rainbow Park Observatory, located at 301 Southern Blvd SE in Rio Rancho and online.  The link for the online portion of the meeting will be posted at www.rrastro.org.  Special Guest Speaker, Dr. Ylva Pihlstrom from UNM will give a presentation on "Red Giant Stars in the Milky Way."
Dr. Ylva Pihlstrom is a professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at UNM.  She received her PhD at Chalmers University of Technology, SE, in 2001.  Dr. Pihlstrom was thereafter a postdoctoral scholar at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and at the California Institute of Technology before starting at UNM in 2005.  She is now an Adjunct Astronomer at the NRAO, the Associate Director of the Center for Astrophysical Research and Technologies at UNM, and the Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Research Computing at UNM.  Her expertise is in radio astronomy and interferometry, with a special research interest in astrophysical masers. 
The public is welcome to attend both the in-person and online meeting, and telescope viewing will be available at the observatory following the meeting, weather permitting.  For more information, visit our website at www.rrastro.org.