[Chaos-l] Meeting on March 11th

[Jayme Hanzak]

Our Monthly Meeting is one week away and we have an excellent speaker lined up. Dr Jerry Watson of the Raleigh Astronomy Club. 

April is Elections month. Think about who may want to nominate for club officers. 

President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer

Here is Dr. Jerry Watson's bio;

Dr. Jerry Watson is a retired Associate Professor of Meteorology at North Carolina State University.  He taught undergraduate and graduate Meteorology courses for some 30 years in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences.  He has been an amateur astronomer for 55+ years beginning around the age of 10 when he discovered a book in the school library in his hometown of Erie, PA about getting out under the stars and learning the constellations.  A few years later, his first telescope (a 3-1/2-inch SkyScope) catalyzed a life-long interest in amateur astronomy.  Jerry has been an active observer of the planets, and all types of astronomical objects, using his 8-inch Criterion and 12.5-inch Meade Newtonian telescopes.  He is a member of the Raleigh Astronomy Club, in which he has served as an officer on several occasions over the past 25 years.

“From Herschel to Hubble – Man Discovers the Galaxies”

The “ construction of the heavens” (size and shape of the ‘universe’) had been in the realm of philosophical speculation for millennia.  William Herschel in the 1770’s was the first to use telescopic observation to determine the shape of, and estimate the size of, the observable stellar system.  Numerous irresolvable nebulae strewn over the sky presented a puzzle, however.  Were they nearby gaseous objects contained within our galaxy, or were they very distant, independent “island universes” comparable to ours?  The astronomical community was split almost evenly in opinion.  The resolution of this intriguing problem was to occupy the hearts and minds of some of astronomy’s best observers and largest telescopes for the next 150 years.

As part of this story we will describe the earliest observations that set the stage for the dichotomy of views, and examine the crucial efforts to determine distances to astronomical objects.  Along the way we shall meet other important ingredients: the motion and spectra of stars, the distribution of globular clusters, and the role of interstellar dust and gas.  Confusion and controversy reigned until the 1920’s when Edwin Hubble established the true nature of galaxies and of the expansion of the universe.  Though our story ends there, the consequences of this extensive research dominate the science of cosmology even today.
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I hope to see you there.

Jayme