Featuring Fr. David Brown, and the latest news of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope! Just for our paying members: on the next Full Moon, October 31, a week from when we are posting this, we’ll be holding our regular on-line meetup where we get to know and chat with each other, and with astronomers from the Vatican Observatory. When I think of David, I think of a guy with a sly sense of humor, a scientist with a passion for both astronomy and teaching, and a priest dedicated to pastoral care of college students. He’s got a fascinating story… from a modest home in New Orleans, to a physics degree at Texas A&M, and then a doctorate at Oxford, where he lived in a Jesuit community which is decorated with original artwork donated by some local prof named J. R. R. Tolkien. Father David Brown SJ was born in New Orleans and entered the Society of Jesus in 1991 after studies at Texas A&M University. During his Jesuit formation, he studied at Fordham University in New York City during 1993-95, then taught physics at Jesuit High School in New Orleans from 1996 to 1999. From 1999-2002, he did his theology studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was ordained a priest in 2002. Fr. Brown completed his doctoral studies in astrophysics at Oxford in England in 2008. His research interests are stellar evolution, seeking to study the formation mechanisms of such stellar objects in different environments, including in the Galactic field, open and globular clusters, and elliptical galaxies. Such research encompasses many disciplines, including binary star interactions, cluster studies, and galaxy evolution (the UV-upturn). More recently, he has begun to study pulsating sdB stars (asteroseismology) from an observational standpoint, using the VATT in Tucson. What date? Thursday, October 31: this is Full…
Full Moon-th Meetup: 31 October, 2020
