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General Meeting – March 2019
March 1, 2019 @ 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
6:30 pm – Introductory Presentation
Title: Annual Report
Speaker: Mae Smith, Ph.D.
TAAA President Mae Smith will give the club’s annual report for 2018.
7:30 pm – Main Presentation
Title: Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association: Sixty-Five Years of Celebrating The Skies
Speaker: Tim Hunter has been an amateur astronomer since 1950, and owns two observatories, the 3towers Observatory and the Grasslands Observatory. He is a past president of Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, Inc. and a member of TAAA since 1975. He is currently the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI). In 1987, he and Dr. David Crawford founded the International Dark-Sky Association, Inc. (IDA), a nonprofit devoted to promoting quality outdoor lighting and combatting the effects of light pollution.
For this month’s main presentation, Tim Hunter celebrates TAAA’s 65th anniversary year. The TAAA was founded in 1954 as the Tucson Amateur Astronomers (TAA) by a small group of amateurs with the strong support of Dr. Edwin F Carpenter, Director of Steward Observatory.
Learn how TAA evolved into the current TAAA, one of the largest and most active amateur clubs in the United States. Ever since its founding, the TAAA has had a close relationship with Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona. In his talk, Tim will highlight some important landmarks of the TAAA as well as the changes in amateur astronomy from 1954. A special feature of the evening will be short presentations by several former TAAA Presidents.