Author: Michael Deneen

October 13 Meeting of the Gloucester Area Astronomy Club

~ Michael Deneen

Our 8:00 Friday October 13 GAAC meeting, at the Lanesville Community Center, will feature a wide-ranging talk by UMass Lowell Physics Professor Supriya Chakrabarti, director of the Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology.

Professor Chakrabarti, who’s made a career of explaining science, will review a series of UMass Lowell astrophysics and space science research projects, including the development, with student participation, of new instruments that are used with ground, balloon, and space-based platforms (including the Hubble), and MASTS, a “one-stop support system for innovators working on small spacecraft,” with partners from academia, industry and government.

We hope you can join us at 8:00 pm on October 13 at the Lanesville Community Center. There’s plenty of free parking, and there is no cost. This promises to be a really fun night, with an accessible, varied program on current science, great snacks, great conversation, and friends old and new. If skies are clear, you’ll get a chance to view Saturn and (possibly) Jupiter after the meeting.

Gloucester Area Astronomy Club Meeting, Friday Sept. 8 at 8:00 pm. It’s Planet Season!

~ Michael Deneen

We haven’t seen the usual summer planets in our evening skies yet this year, but Jupiter and Saturn rise earlier every night, and along with Uranus they’ll be visible during more convenient evening hours this fall. 

Accordingly, Friday’s GAAC meeting will feature three short informational talks, one each on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. We’ll be treated to a history of the exploration of each planet, and learn some interesting, sometimes very weird facts about each one; we’ll review what we can see in a telescope, and what to look for. 

Come join us at the Lanesville Community Center at 8:00 pm on Friday 9/8, for all the usual goodies and fun conversation, and for a solar system primer just in time for the fall 2023 planet season. If skies permit we’ll have set up a few telescopes outside, and you’ll get to observe Saturn, always a fun experience, but one you’ll find more rewarding because of what you’ll have learned from our presenters. This will be a good night.

Doors open at 7:45. There’s plenty of free parking, never any dues or fees, and all are welcome. We hope to see you there.

Gloucester Area Astronomy Club Meeting, Friday, August 11: Astrophotography Night in Lanesville!

~ Michael Deneen
Image credit Phil Orbanes

Our August 11 GAAC meeting, at 8:00 pm at the Lanesville Community Center, will feature our annual, always-popular Astrophotography program, a series of presentations by our  photographers, each showing off some of their most compelling work. 

This will be an opportunity for you to experience locally-captured images of galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters in a bright, large format on our screen, with explanations of what we’re all seeing and what is important about it. 

We’ve also added an important new introduction to the program. This year our own professional explainer Dr. Bill Waller, late of Rockport High School, will tell us up front, in plain language, what some of those baffling initials the photographers use actually mean. Knowing what head-scratchers like Ha, RGB, O3, or RASA are all about can help you see more in each astronomical object, and understand more about the process of capturing its image.

We hope you can join us at the Lanesville Community Center on the 11th for a fun evening with GAAC. There’s plenty of free parking, no dues or fees, lots of great snacks and conversation and amazing presentations, and you’ll leave knowing things you don’t know now. What could be better? Doors open at 7:45.

Gloucester Area Astronomy Club’s “Welcome to Amateur Astronomy” Night, at the Lanesville Community Center Friday July 14 @ 8:00

~ Michael Deneen

On Friday July 14 at 8:00 pm, we’ll have our first “Welcome to Amateur Astronomy Night” since Covid. Like everything we do, there is no cost. If you have ever wondered how to use that telescope in your closet, or what you can see with it, join us. If you have questions like “what are the different telescope designs,” or “how much does that thing cost,” or even “will it fit in my Subaru,” then this night is for you. We’ll tell you where we shop, what not to buy, how we find stuff in the sky, and what we never go out without.

You’ll see five short, fun, ten-minute presentations that address all these questions and more. Telescopes of all types and sizes will be set up inside for you to inspect after the talks, with their owners right there to answer your questions. Come join us, whether you’ve already got a scope and want to learn more, or if you’re just getting started, or if you’re just curious about amateur telescopes and astronomy. If skies are clear, we’ll set up a scope or two outside to show you how it all works. 

We’ll be live at the Lanesville Community Center, Friday July 14 at 8:00, with good things to eat and fun stuff to learn. There’s lots of free parking, and no dues or fees. I hope we’ll see you there. 

GAAC is Back Live in Lanesville!

~ Michael Deneen

The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club is once again meeting in-person at the Lanesville Community Center, on the second Friday of every month at 8:00 pm. We have a terrific program for our Friday August 13 meeting, with astronomer Dr. Seth Gossage from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, with a great presentation on starlight and what it can tell us.

In addition to discussing what light can tell us about a star’s properties such as mass and chemistry, Dr. Gossage will review next generation stellar models built to explore the effects of stellar rotation. Stars spin, and this is also a fundamental stellar property (alongside mass and chemical composition), which helps determine the evolutionary course of a star, and its light output for the entirety of its lifetime.

GAAC members meet at the Lanesville Community Center in the Lanesville neighborhood of Gloucester MA, at 8:00 pm on the second Friday of every month, for presentations, discussions and activities related to all facets of astronomy. There is no cost. These are fun meetings, with lots of friendly people, refreshments, and great, accessible talks by knowledgeable and entertaining folks. Come see us! No special knowledge or equipment is needed to have a great time. Meetings are also streamed live on our Facebook page. For more information on the club, see our website.

Gloucester Area Astronomy Club Holiday Party!

~ Michael Deneen

On Friday night, December 13, for our 16th annual Holiday Party, we are fortunate to once again have with us the celebrated Kelly Beatty, Senior Editor of Sky & Telescope Magazine (see more of Kelley’s bio below). This year Kelly’s presentation asks the perennial question “Are We Alone?

Our galaxy, Kelly writes, “likely contains more planets than stars — so what are the odds of finding distant Earth-like worlds that teem with life? After surveying the amazing diversity of life on Earth — and the theories of how it started here — we’ll sample the kinds of worlds around other stars that astronomers have discovered and explore whether any of them might be suitable for life. And we’ll catch up on efforts to contact alien civilizations directly, via radio transmissions and other means.”

This will be a very entertaining and richly informative night, so come early and grab a good seat and some great food and conversation before all the festivities begin.

The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club meets at 8:00 pm on the second Friday of the month, at the Lanesville Community Center, 8 Vulcan Street in Lanesville. There is plenty of off-street parking. All are welcome, there is no cost, and no special knowledge is required to have a great time.

A little bit of Kelly Beatty’s bio: 
Kelly has been honored twice by the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society. In 2005 he received the Harold Masursky Award for meritorious service, and in 2009 he was honored with the inaugural Jonathan Eberhart Journalism Award. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Astronomical League Award (in 2006) for his contributions to the science of astronomy and the American Geophysical Union’s Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism (2009).

Kelly hails from Madera, California. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in science journalism from Boston University. During the 1980s he was among the first Western journalists to gain firsthand access to the Soviet space program. Asteroid 2925 Beatty was named on the occasion of his marriage in 1983, and in 1986 he was chosen one of the 100 semifinalists for NASA’s Journalist in Space program.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing 50 Year Celebration Saturday Night 7/20

~ Michael Deneen

The 50th anniversary of the first human footsteps on the Moon will be celebrated on Saturday, July 20 from 8 PM to 10 PM at the Lanesville Community Center (8 Vulcan Street). 

There will be sharing of memories, along with a presentation by former Navy Seal Earl Kishida who helped retrieve the Apollo astronauts at sea. Astronomer Bill Waller will then discuss what we have learned from lunar exploration, and what lies ahead. 

The evening will end with a toast to the Apollo astronauts and to the thousands of people who supported their pioneering missions. The event is free with donations accepted in support of the Rockport Community Observatory Project being led by the Educational Foundation for Rockport.  For more information, please contact Bill Waller at williamhwaller@gmail.com.

July 12 Meeting of the Gloucester Area Astronomy Club: How do Stars and Planets Form?

~ Michael Deneen

This month we’re fortunate to have Catherine Zucker of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as our guest speaker. Catherine will show us how we have begun to derive accurate distance measurements to large, star-forming molecular clouds in the Milky Way galaxy, and what that means for astronomy.

Why go to all this trouble? Obtaining accurate distance measurements to molecular clouds is important for understanding the star and planet formation process. The advent of large photometric surveys and the Gaia mission offer an unprecedented opportunity to derive the distances and properties of hundreds of millions of stars, as well as the molecular clouds between them. 

Without resorting to scary math, Catherine will explain how we have combined these data with statistical methods to create a new 3D map of molecular clouds in the solar neighborhood (the nearest 10,000 lightyears). As it turns out, these phenomena are surprisingly interrelated — using interactive visualization software, we can find new connections between long-studied molecular clouds that reveal a link between individual star-forming regions and the larger Galactic environment.

The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club meets on the second Friday of every month (except August) at 8:00 pm at the Lanesville Community Center, 8 Vulcan Street in Lanesville. There is no cost, and all are welcome. For more info on the club, see the website or Facebook page, and you can follow us on Twitter, @GAACster.

June 14 Meeting of the Gloucester Area Astronomy Club, with Steve O’Meara

~ Michael Deneen
“Spoke” markings in Saturn’s rings are visible in the lower left.

Our speaker for the June 14 GAAC meeting will be none other than Steve O’Meara, the very accomplished astronomer and writer who, very unexpectedly, observed apparent “spokes” in Saturn’s ring system in 1976. Steve reported observing these phenomena with the 9 inch refractor at Harvard (an interesting account of the reception of O’Meara’s observations is available here, in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage). His observations were discounted by colleagues and professionals, who pointed out that no such thing could persist due to differential rotation of the rings.

Then in 1980 the Voyager 1 spacecraft visited Saturn, reported spokes in the rings, and got credit for the discovery. Some speculate that this may be because of an inherent distrust of visual observation as opposed to photographic astronomy. In his talk, Steve will speak about his observations of Saturn and the events that followed. This is sure to be a fascinating and colorful account, and, incidentally, a welcome affirmation of the value of careful visual observational astronomy — a good story all around.

Come and hear this riveting tale of discovery and professional and scientific intrigue. GAAC meets at 8:00 pm on the second Friday of every month except August, at the Lanesville Community Center, 8 Vulcan Street in Lanesville. More information can be had at the club’s website, Facebook page, or on Twitter, @GAACster. There is plenty of off-street parking, and all are welcome. There is no cost.

May 10 Meeting of the Gloucester Area Astronomy Club: the Leviathan of Parsonstown

~ Michael Deneen

At our May 10 meeting, Amateur astronomer and perennial GAAC favorite Dwight Lanpher will speak about his visit last September to Birr Castle, County Offaly, Ireland to examine “the Great Telescope.” Any review of the history of astronomy will likely discover this large telescope called the “Leviathan of Parsonsonstown.” Built in Ireland in 1845 by the 3rd Earl of Rosse, it was the largest telescope in the world for 70 years. Each of two 72″ speculum-metal mirrors were alternately mounted in a 54′ long tube, suspended between two purpose built castle walls.

Dwight’s dynamic presentation will show details of how the telescope was operated and the modifications that were made during a $1,200,000 renovation in 1995. Images will also include the last remaining of the two, 3-ton, speculum mirrors examined during the return trip at its current location at the Museum of Science in London.

When not visiting ancient telescopes, Mr. Lanpher travels throughout New England and eastern Canada attending astronomy meetings as liaison for clubs in Maine, New Hampshire and a few, including GAAC, in Massachusetts, and observing at their star parties when the opportunity avails. Professionally, Mr. Lanpher works as an Electrical Engineer.

This will be a fun, informative meeting, full of large telescopes, a large chocolate cake, and large but thoroughly graspable ideas. We hope to see you there!

The Gloucester Area Astronomy Club meets on the second Friday of every month except August. There are no dues or fees, and there’s plenty of free parking.

For more information on the club, see the website, Facebook page, or Twitter, @GAACster.