CAA

April 8 Membership Meeting: The Great Melbourne Telescope rises again

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Photo: Author Trudy E. Bell, M.A.
Trudy E. Bell, M.A.

The April 2019 Membership Meeting of the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association will take place on Monday, April 8 beginning at 7:30 PM. The evening’s program, “Rising From the Ashes: Restoration of the Great Melbourne Telescope,” will be presented by Trudy E. Bell, M.A. Ms. Bell is a Sky & Telescope Contributing Editor, 2006 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s David N. Schramm Award, and board member of the Antique Telescope Society.

When completed in 1869, the Great Melbourne Telescope was the world’s largest equatorial reflector. Today, 150 years later — after a bushfire that devastated the Mount Stromlo Observatory — Australian opticians and machinists are restoring the GMT to become one of the world’s largest telescopes for public outreach! Ms. Bell’s latest article about the restoration appears in the October 2018 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine.

Photo: Photo: The Great Melbourne Telescope was built by Thomas Grubb of Dublin in 1868 and erected at Melbourne Observatory in 1869. It was a reflector telescope with a speculum (metal) mirror of 48 inches. Image Courtesy: Museums Victoria
Photo: The Great Melbourne Telescope was built by Thomas Grubb of Dublin in 1868 and erected at Melbourne Observatory in 1869. It was a reflector telescope with a speculum (metal) mirror of 48 inches. Image Courtesy: Museums Victoria

The CAA’s monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month (except December) at 7:30 PM at the Rocky River Nature Center; 24000 Valley Parkway; North Olmsted, Ohio, in the Cleveland Metroparks. Meeting programs are open to the public. Following the presentation and a brief social break, the club will conduct its membership business meeting.

March Membership Meeting

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Robert Owen, Ph.D. - Oberlin College Photo
Robert Owen, Ph.D. – Oberlin College Photo

The March 2019 Membership Meeting of the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association will take place on Monday, March 11 beginning at 7:30 PM. The evening’s program, “Gravitational Waves from Colliding Black Holes,” will be presented by Rob Owen, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, at Oberlin College.

Dr. Owen is a member of the Simulating Extreme Spacetimes collaboration (www.black-holes.org), which carries out supercomputer simulations of colliding black holes and neutron stars. Such simulations are essential for relating gravitational wave signals (such as those measured by the revolutionary LIGO observatory) to the astrophysical sources that produce them. In this talk he will describe the work and the often misunderstood physics of black holes and how they relate to the structure of space and time!

The CAA’s monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month (except December) at 7:30 PM at the Rocky River Nature Center; 24000 Valley Parkway; North Olmsted, Ohio, in the Cleveland Metroparks. Meeting programs are open to the public. Following the presentation and a brief social break, the club will conduct its membership business meeting.

“Looking for the Dark” at the CAA’s Monthly Membership Meeting: February 11

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John Ruhl, Ph.D. Photo Credit: CWRU
John Ruhl, Ph.D. Photo Credit: CWRU

The Monday, February 11 meeting of the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association, will feature John Ruhl, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Cosmology at Case Western Reserve University, as guest speaker. In his talk, “Looking for the Dark,” Dr.Ruhl will describe the latest findings from two new and unique projects designed to utilize gravity waves and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation to search for the mysterious Dark Energy that is causing our universe to expand!

Following the presentation and a brief social break, the club will conduct its membership business meeting.

The CAA’s monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month (except December) at 7:30 PM at the Rocky River Nature Center; 24000 Valley Parkway; North Olmsted, Ohio, in the Cleveland Metroparks. Meeting programs are open to the public,

November 12: Final membership meeting of 2018

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Artist's Concept: Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet to be found within the habitable zone -- the region around the host star where the temperature is right for liquid water. This planet is also very close in size to Earth. Even though we may not find out what's going on at the surface of this planet anytime soon, it's a strong reminder of why new technologies are being developed that will enable scientists to get a closer look at distant worlds.
Artist’s Concept: Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet to be found within the habitable zone — the region around the host star where the temperature is right for liquid water.
Credits: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

The Monday, November 12 meeting of the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association (CAA), at Rocky River Nature Center, will be the last for the year and will feature the election of officers and at-large board members for the next two-year term. Annual dues will also be due at that time.

The evening’s program, which is open to the public, is titled, “Discovering New Worlds”
presented by CAA member Lydia Bindal. Ms. Bindal will take us on a metaphorical expedition to explore exoplanets: planets which aren’t a part of our solar system! How do we detect them? What have we found so far? What are their properties? What can they tell us about our own solar system? And could they possess life?

The CAA’s monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month (except December) at 7:30 PM at the Rocky River Nature Center; 24000 Valley Parkway; North Olmsted, Ohio, in the Cleveland Metroparks.

Following the presentation and a brief social break, the club will conduct its membership business meeting.