Meeting and Talk: “Astronomy-Related Adventures East of Detroit”

The Warren Astronomical Society meets monthly on the third Thursday in a room in the library (Building J) at Macomb Community College's South Campus. We are meeting in J221; enter through the front doors. We do a bit of club business early on, then have a major presentation usually put together by one of our members.

Our main talk is “Astronomy-Related Adventures East of Detroit” by Dr. Jerry Dunifer. Jerry says: For the past several years I have made a number of trips southwest of Detroit to states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to visit astronomy-related sites such as major observatories, the Jet Propulsion Lab, SETI headquarters, the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, and so forth. A few months ago I made a trip in another direction, going primarily east of Detroit. During a one-week trip by car I was able to visit a number of different sites which have connections to astronomy. First was the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh which has the World’s third largest optical refractor and where important studies were carried out in the history of astronomy. Second was the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia, which is the World’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope. Third and fourth were the Smithsonian Air and Space Museums in the vicinity of Washington D.C., where one can see the Space Shuttle Discovery and a variety of space probes used in astronomy. Fifth was a tour of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C., where precision atomic clocks give us time standards used in this country. And finally, the trip concluded with a tour of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where we attended a seminar given by two astronauts who had just returned from 200 days on the International Space Station. Our tour also included viewing the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently under construction there in a giant clean room and which is scheduled for launch in October, 2018. The talk will cover each of these sites individually with detailed information and photos.

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Dr. Dunifer is Professor Emeritus at Wayne State University's Department of Physics and Astronomy. He travels for fun a great deal, and as of last month can say that he's been to both the North and South Poles and has walked all the way around the Earth.

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After each WAS Macomb meeting, some club members get together to continue to the discussion in a more free-form way at the National Coney Island on Van Dyke just north of 12 Mile. This is a opportunity to further discuss astronomy in an informal environment for about an hour or so. All members and guests are invited to join us there.

We generally leave from the meeting around 9:30 PM and meet at the restaurant a few minutes later. You can order food from the menu if you like, but not everyone does. Most leave the restaurant around 11:30 PM.

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If you would like to present a short talk (5-15 minutes) or a long talk (40-60 minutes) at a future meeting, please email Ralph DeCew at firstvp@warrenastro.org.

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The views expressed in presentations are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent, and should not be attributed to, the Warren Astronomical Society.