Mark your calendars for our next free public lecture and star party at the Morgan Arboretum:
Saturday, August 6, 2011
8:00 p.m.
Speaker: David Levy
Topic: A Nightwatchman’s Journey: My Adventures as a comet discoverer and skywatcher
Followed by star gazing, weather permitting
Morgan Arboretum
Visitor’s Centre
Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue
About this talk
By David Levy
I was on the way to my high school French Oral exam in October 1965 when I decided that I wanted to begin a search for comets. Although I began the search on December 17 that year, it was not until 1984 — 19 years or 917 hours at the eyepiece later — that I discovered my first comet. Twenty-one finds later, I still feel that comets are more than just targets to be catalogued.
Thanks in part to one co-discoveries, Shoemaker-Levy 9, we know more about the role that comet collisions have played in the origin and evolution of life on this planet.
I am still searching for comets both visually and with an automated CCD program.
This talk will be about my observing career and how my childhood fascination with the night sky led to a highly satisfying time under the night sky.
About the Speaker
David H. Levy is one of the most successful comet discoverers in history. He has discovered 22 comets, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. With Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California he discovered Shoemaker-Levy 9, the comet that collided with Jupiter in 1994.
Levy is the author or editor of 35 books and other products. He won an Emmy in 1998 as part of the writing team for the Discovery Channel documentary, “Three Minutes to Impact.” As the Science Editor for Parade Magazine from 1997 to 2006, he was able to reach more than 80 million readers, almost a quarter of the population of the United States. A contributing editor for Sky and Telescope Magazine, he writes its monthly “Star Trails” column, and his “Nightfall” feature appears in each issue of the Canadian Magazine Skynews.
Levy is President of the National Sharing the Sky Foundation, an organization intended to inspire new generations to develop an inquiring interest in the sciences, or in other words, to reach for the stars.
David Levy is the Honourary President of the RASC Montral Centre.
