Join us this Friday, October 13th for our AGM, and as we welcome Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory joining us via ZOOM. Br. Guy’s topic for the evening will be “What’s Surfacing About Bennu?”.

The recent NASA mission to asteroid Bennu, OSIRIS-REx, which is bringing back samples gathered on its surface, discovered a surface that, on the surface, doesn’t make sense: it’s covered with boulders, but it absorbs heat like a powder. What’s going on and how did it get that way? Our measurements of the most likely analog meteorite type, CM carbonaceous chondrites, suggests a surprising answer.

Br. Guy, a native of Detroit, Michigan, has earned degrees in Planetary Science from MIT and the University of Arizona. He was a research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics before entering the Jesuits in 1989. At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, in 2015 Pope Francis appointed Dr. Consolmagno director of the Vatican Observatory.

We will also have our monthly favourite – “The Sky this Month” for October. Don’t forget we will be giving away some door prizes, and will also gladly accept donations of food or cash for delivery to Hamilton FoodShare. Anything you can spare would be greatly appreciated!

Doors open at 7:00 PM and the meeting begins at 7:30 PM. For those not able to attend in person, we will be livestreaming the meeting on ZOOM for club members and will also be post the full meeting on our YouTube channel after the meeting.

We hope to see you there!

Photo credit: Sky News