Reminder - Saturday - Potluck, Dr Steven Beckwith

[Rob Jaworski]

Hello SJAA Members and Friends,

Just a reminder about tomorrow night's event.  There will be a potluck starting at 6:30PM, followed by our speaker starting at 8PM. It's all at the SJAA basecamp, the Hall at Houge Park in San Jose.

http://www.sjaa.net/directions.shtml

Our speaker will be Dr. Steven Beckwith, Professor of Astronomy, UC Berkeley.  The title of his talk is "The Dawn of Creation: The First Two Billion Years".  That was just before the SJAA was founded, if records are correct.  Here's a preview of what to expect:

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The beauty of the universe, the galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and most of the stars, got its start in the first billion years after the beginning of time, the Big Bang. Every deep picture of the sky reveals thousands of these galaxies, each made up of billions of stars like the Sun. The intricate spiral structures of the Milky Way as well as the very smooth distributions of the larger elliptical galaxies took shape slowly, building up from many pieces in the detritus of the initial explosion governed by the dark matter that we can sense but still not see. Modern technical wonders like the Hubble Space Telescope have made it possible to look back to a time when the universe looked very different that it does today, when the first galaxies were created and the universe developed structure seen as patterns in the galaxies apparent today.
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And the potluck... Bring good eats! Show up at 6:30 to partake, but volunteers will be arriving at 5:45 to start setting up.

And speaking of volunteering, if you've like to help out tomorrow, your help and company would welcome!  We're experimenting with a signup sheet for some things that need to be done before, and after, the potluck and meeting. Here's the link to the signup sheet:

http://www.jooners.com/guest?l=411e1d5e-d5ac-4e66-b34c-4b977f54539c

Note you do NOT need to register with that site to sign up.  Also, you do NOT need to provide your email unless you want a one time reminder from that site about your volunteer task.  It's pretty benign (or else we wouldn't be experimenting with it!).

Hope you can make it, and have a great full moon holiday weekend, everyone!

Rob Jaworski

San Jose Astronomical Association