Alex, Dr O'Dell will be speaking to PAS next spring. He is scheduled to talk
about stellar evolution. I am glad you were able to hear him. It sounds like a
great presentation. Too bad about the bad weather. I hope you and Diane had fun
on a Frankopedia tour. Sam
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On Sunday, June 12, 2016 Alex Vrenios <axv@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Our primary reason for going to the Grand Canyon this weekend was for something
other than the GC Star Party, but since we arrived on Friday, we decided to
have a look.
They started with a presentation by Dr. Odell, Professor of Astronomy and
Physics at the Northern Arizona University. Quite nicely done! I was expecting
a very general preview of what we might see outside, but he did a whole show of
stellar evolution. Photos (from large, ground based scopes and the Hubble space
telescope) of nebulas demonstrated the difference between a gas cloud that is
so hot it glows, and a cloud that just reflects the light from adjacent stars.
He showed dust clouds that completely blocked the stars in a small region of
the sky and thinner clouds that allowed the brightest stars to shine through.
He showed clusters with mostly blue-white stars and a small number of red
giants. Then he described the Main Sequence on a stellar evolution graph, along
with the white dwarfs, giants and supergiants, tying the whole stellar
evolutionary cycle together to end his speech. Very interesting.
We went outside afterward but it was so cloudy that the Moon was just barely
visible.
Saturday night we decided to give it another try, thinking if we aimed for a
9:30pm arrival, the best parking spots would just become available, vacated by
early arrivals. Alas, there was a sprinkling rain as we left the hotel so we
aborted. Oh well, maybe next year?

Alex & Diane
