[Cialug] St Louis Astronomical Society [Tomorrow-Friday!] ~ Quasars: Black Holes, Bright Lights!

[Don Ellis]

I apologize for not having sent this to the group earlier. Not checking my
mail as often as I should. This meeting tomorrow promises to be quite
interesting. Unlike the usual meetings, it sounds like Zoom links will be
posted on the society website.

I hope to see someone from our group there, besides the usual attendees
from SLAS.

--Don Ellis (St Louis Linux User Group)


*“Quasars: Black Holes, Bright Lights!”*, an illustrated presentation by* Dr.
Amy Kimball of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), *will be
featured at the July meeting of the Saint Louis Astronomical Society. The
meeting will be held via Zoom online conference *only, *due to the
coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. The meeting and lecture will begin at *7:30
p.m. on Friday, July 17*. Zoom access information is posted on the
Society’s website, www.slasonline.org  . The event, cosponsored by NASA's
Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

      Quasars are very bright, very distant objects first found by the
powerful radio waves that many emit. They must generate tremendous amounts
of energy to be visible across a billion or more light years. Dr. Kimball
will explain how quasars are detected and mapped and why astronomers think
that supermassive black holes are linked to the quasar power source. She
will also talk about her work with the Very Large Array, an interconnected
group of twenty-seven massive radio telescopes, each with a disk over
eighty feet across.

      Dr. Amy Kimball is a staff scientist at the NRAO headquarters in
Socorro, NM. She assists astronomers worldwide who use the Jansky Very
Large Array (VLA) radio telescope facility.  She is also the Head of
Operations of the VLA Sky Survey, which is in the process of imaging the
entire radio sky visible from New Mexico.  Dr. Kimball uses the VLA and
other telescopes (both radio and non-radio) to study the demographics of
quasars--- super-massive black holes at the centers of large galaxies.



     The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals
interested in astronomy and telescopes. The public is invited to attend its
meetings, telescope observing sessions, and special events. For more
information about Astronomical Society events, please visit
www.slasonline.org   , or call 314- 962-9231.

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*Associate Member, NASA Missouri Space Grant Consortium at Washington
University in Saint Louis*

* Campus Box 1169,    One Brookings Drive, Saint Louis, MO 63130-4899*