General Meeting – June 2018

6:30 pm – Introductory Presentation

Title:  Variable Stars, the AAVSO and the Astronomical League

Speaker:  Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith will present a history of Variable Star observing and discoveries, the importance of this work. A description of what a variable star is and the process that causes the variability. He will discuss the AAVSO and their purpose and look at their website. He will also discuss the Astronomical League’s three observing programs for variable stars.

7:30 pm – Main Presentation

Title:  Train Wrecks Across Time: A History of Galaxy Mergers

Speaker:  Barry Rothberg, Ph.D.,  Large Binocular
Telescope Observatory

The collision and merging of galaxies is one of the most violent events in the Universe.  Galaxy mergers are far from rare, and are responsible for reshaping and creating galaxies, forming millions of new stars, enriching and forging new elements, and birthing and fueling the most powerful and destructive engines in the known Universe.  But galaxy mergers have not only reshaped the Universe over the last 13 billion years, but have served as a means of reshaping humanity’s understanding of astronomy and physics.  In this presentation, we will start on a journey beginning several centuries earlier, and see how galactic train wrecks have helped further the development of astronomical optics, altered and remade our basic understanding of physics, and inspired astronomers to see how the Universe is both vast and ever expanding.  We will also see how galaxy mergers will impact our own future. Our Milky Way galaxy and one of our galactic neighbors, the Andromeda galaxy, are hurtling towards each other, destined to collide and eventually merge. Our understanding how galaxy mergers occur and their outcome will serve as a means of seeing our own inevitable future.