ONLINE – General Meeting – December 2020

TAAA’s first Friday monthly meeting will be held online. The December meeting will have a 6:30 P.M. Main Presentation open to the General Public. This will be followed at approximately 7:15 P.M. by a Members-only meeting, at which TAAA’s David Rossetter will present proposed Constitution and Bylaw changes. To view the next meeting,  please visit                                  https://www.facebook.com/TucsonAstronomy

6:30 pm – Main Presentation

Title:  Fun with Fermi AGN – A Quick Stroll Through a Lethal Photon Field

Speaker Bio:  Paul Smith was born in Rochester, NY, during the year Sputnik circled the planet, and numerous atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted, as the two dominant global powers rattled sabers. Dr. Smith muses it might have been the high tensions of the era, or the elevated radiation levels that pulled him into science, particularly astronomy, by grade 4. He earned a B.S. in physics from Saint Louis University, and a Ph.D. in the same field from the University of New Mexico, before moving to Tucson in 1986.  For most of the past 35 years, Dr. Smith has been at Steward Observatory, and has been successively involved with the Hubble, Spitzer, and Fermi space observatories.  His main research interest is the polarized light emitted from quasars and other types of active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Presentation:  Dr. Smith’s presentation centers around NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the decade-long effort to support this important science mission by using telescopes in the Tucson area to observe the most active quasars. While extremely active quasars, or blazars, represents a small percentage of the population of known active galactic nuclei (AGN), it makes up over 70% of the objects detected by Fermi in the high-energy gamma-ray sky. Blazars are highly variable in brightness and polarization on short time scales (less than a day), enabling us to study relatively small regions that produce enormous amounts of energy. Many observations at different wavelengths are needed to understand the physics of these systems. Dr. Smith’s presentation will take us to the cutting edge of science.

7:15 pm (Approx) – Second Presentation

Title:  Members-only Meeting – Constitution and Bylaw changes

Speaker:  David Rossetter

The main presentation will be followed by a members-only meeting, at which David Rossetter will present proposed Constitution and Bylaw changes.