General Meeting – May 2018

6:30 pm – Introductory Presentation

Title:  Seasonal Night Sky Objects

Presenter:  Mary Turner

Mary Turner, TAAA’s appointed Chief Observer, takes us on a tour of the spring night sky. As usual in her popular talks, Mary’s use of astronomical data, images, and mythology brings the seasonal changes in the sky to life.,

7:30 pm – Main Presentation

Title:  Gravitational Waves and Things that Go Boom in the Night or The Start Of The Age of Multi-Messenger Astronomy

Presenter:  Dr. David Sand. Dr. Sand received his undergraduate degree in Physics from UCLA and his PhD in Physics from Caltech. He is now an Assistant Professor in Astronomy at the University of Arizona, and an observational astrophysicist with many interests. He is particularly interested in time domain astronomy (how astronomical objects change in time), especially in the progenitors of supernova. In his free time, he enjoys the outdoors with his wife Debbie and daughter Delilah .

In his presentation, Dr. Sand talks about the ‘time domain’ revolution in astronomy, and how we are finding new ways to study stars that merge, burp and explode by looking at their imprints on space-time via gravitational waves.  He will highlight recent results on the gravitational wave detection of the merger of two neutron stars, and look to the future of this field. Dr. Sand’s interest in things that go bump in the night led to his team’s search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves.