Unless otherwise indicated, monthly meetings are held on the third Friday of every month, at 7:30 pm. Besides club business, meetings always feature a speaker and/or some kind of presentation. Unless otherwise indicated, meetings are held at the Detroit Observatory on the campus of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor (see Map below).
The July meetings are usually held on the campus of Eastern Michigan University, due to Ann Arbor Art Fair congestion and parking issues.
Directions and Parking to EMU Sherzer Observatory
On occasion, we meet at the UM Museum of Natural History’s Planetarium.
Directions and Parking to the UM Planetarium
Map to the Detroit Observatory:
2024
(for list of abbreviations, see the end of this page).
- January 19: Speaker: Melissa Kaelin, PR and Communications Manager at University of Michigan – Climate & Space, “Outsmart Space Weather Forecasts to Catch Aurora in Your Backyard”, YouTube Book Facebook Page
2023
- December 15: Speaker: David Gerdes, Chair of UM Physics Department, “Shadow of a Fossil: Stellar Occultations and NASA’s Lucy Mission to Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids”, Abstract YouTube
- November 17: Speaker: Timothy Campbell, Ford Amateur Astronomy Club, “James Webb Telescope”, YouTube
- October 20: Speaker: Brian Ottum, Lowbrow Vice President, “Preparing for Next Year’s Eclipse”, YouTube
- September 15: Speaker: Avital Keeley/Polston, EMU Physics, “The History and Future of Mapping the Oort Cloud”, YouTube
- August 18: Speaker: Tamas Gombosi, UM Center for Space Environment Modeling. “Space Weather: Is the Sun or Humanity More Dangerous?”, YouTube
- July 21: Norb Vance, EMU Planetarium & Sherzer Observatory
- June 16: Speaker: Jim Shedlowski, “Orbital Light Pollution”, YouTube NOTE: Some audio problems were experienced at this meeting, so you may need to turn up your Volume levels.
- May 19: Speaker: Buddy Stark, UM Natural History Museum Planetarium Director, “Visit to the UM Museum of Natural History Planetarium”, YouTube
- April 21: Speaker: Dr. Jeff Morganthaler, Planetary Science Institute, “Studying Volcanic Activity on Jupiter’s Moon Io Using Equipment You Can Buy at a Camera Shop”, YouTube
- March 17: Speaker: Dr. Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti, UM Astronomy, “Parker Solar Probe: Mission Design and Scientific Discoveries”, YouTube
- February 17: Speaker: Ken Bertin, Warren Astronomical Society, “The Birth, Life and Death of Stars”, YouTube (partial)
- January 20: Speaker: Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, “What’s Surfacing About Bennu?”, YouTube
2022
- December 16: Fred Schebor, long-time club member, “The Artsy-Meaningless Slide Show”
- November 18: Professor Neil Cornish, Montana State University, “The Dawn of Gravitational Wave Astronomy”, YouTube
- October 21: Associate Professor Elena Gallo, UM Astronomy, “Seeing and Hearing Black Holes, (big and small)”, YouTube
- August 19: Professor Karim Jaffer, John Abbott College, “Two-eyed Seeing: Indigenous & Ancient Stories of the Night Sky”, YouTube
- July 15: Norb Vance, EMU Observatory Director, “Headlands and Beaver Island”, YouTube
- June 17: Dr. Zachary A. Constan, MSU, “(almost) 14 Billion Years of Nuclei”, YouTube
- May 20: Professor Rudi Lindner, U/M History, “The Michigan-California Axis in Astronomy”, YouTube
- April 15: Adrian Bradley, Lowbrow VP, “The Dark Skies of Michigan”, YouTube
- March 18: Adrian Bradley, Lowbrow VP, “Pictures of the Sky (Wide-field AP)”, YouTube
- February 18: Professor Claude Pruneau, WSU Physics Dept, “Probing the Properties of Hot QCD Matter”, YouTube
- January 21: Dan Durda, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, “The Southwest Research Institute’s Suborbital Research Initiative: First Flights with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin”, YouTube
2021
- December 17: Don Fohey, Lowbrow member, “The New Horizon mission to Pluto”, YouTube
- November 19: Prof. Fred Adams, UM Physics, “Constraints of the Future of Computation”, YouTube
- October 15: Dr. Keren Sharon, UM Astronomy, “Gravitational Lensing”, YouTube
- September 17: Prof. John Monnier, UM Astronomy, “Telescope Interferometry–Stars and Exoplanets”, YouTube
- August 20: Jodi McCullough, Lowbrow member, “Use of Images Plus”, YouTube
- July 16: Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA, Science Mission Directorate, “Together We Explore”, YouTube
- June 18: Awni Hafedh, Lowbrow member, “Solar Imaging and Processing”, YouTube
- May 21: Jim Shedlowsky, Warren Astronomical Society, “The LSST: Wide, Fast, and Deep”, YouTube
- April 16: Brian Ottum, PhD, University Lowbrow Astronomers, “Astronomical Image Processing Overview”, YouTube
- March 19: Tom Field, Field Tested Systems LLC, “Astronomical Spectroscopy”, YouTube
- February 19: Dr. Sean Gavin, Prof. & Associate Chair, WSU Physics/Astronomy, “Lord Kelvin and the Sun”, YouTube
- January 15: Prof. Emeritus Patrick Seitzer, UM Astronomy, “Large Constellations of Satellites in Low Earth Orbit and Optical Astronomy”, YouTube
2020
- December 18: Ryan Farber, Graduate Student, UM Astronomy, “Galactic Winds”, YouTube
- November 20: Richard Teague, SMA Fellow, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “How to Find Baby Planets”, YouTube
- October 16: Professor August (Gus) Evrard, UM Physics and Astronomy, “Galaxy Clusters”, YouTube
- September 18: Adrian Bradley, Lowbrow VP, 2020 President of GLAAC, “Preparing for AATB [during Covid]”, YouTube
- August 21: Awni Hafedh, Lowbrow member, “Intro to Astrophotography with DSLRs”, YouTube
- July 17: Jim Shedlowsky, “The Evolution of Giant Telescopes”, YouTube
- June 19: Ken Bertin, Warren Astronomy, “Max Fleischer (Animator with an Interest in Astronomy)”, YouTube
- May 15: Professor and Chair David Cinabro, WSU Physics & Astronomy, “Zowada Observatory”, YouTube
- April 17: Professor Michael Meyer, UM Astronomy, “Exoplanets”, YouTube
- February 21: Professor Michael Liemohn, UM Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, “Mars Atmospheric Loss”
- January 17: Professor Edwin Bergin, UM, Chair of Astronomy, “Planet Formation – how a planet like Earth forms.”
1980 to 2019
Abbreviations