6 Feb. 2025 – Club Meeting Presentation
— Thursday night, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
This free speaker presentation will be offered in-person at the UNC-Asheville Reuter Center and virtually online. Registration is not required; use this Zoom link to watch the presentation remotely.
Although parking for this meeting at the Reuter Center is free, you must register your vehicle with a “visitor daily” permit at this link. Once registration is complete, visitors will not need to print or display a permit; the new system utilizes camera-based License Plate Recognition technology. All vehicles must park front-end in, so that the license plate is visible.
An Astronomy Guest Speaker Series Event – a collaboration of the Astronomy Club of Asheville and UNC-Asheville
Multi-Armed vs. Grand Design Galaxies: Why Are They Different?
– presented by Beverly Smith, Ph.D.,
East Tennessee State University
More than 170 years after spiral galaxies were discovered, how their spiral arms are generated and maintained is still uncertain. One way to distinguish between possible scenarios is to count the number of spiral arms in galaxies and compare them with other properties of the galaxy. In this presentation, Dr. Smith will describe recent research on this topic, comparing galaxy arm counts with other parameters, including the bulge-to-disk ratio, bulge structure, overall light concentration, central surface brightness, galaxy rotation curve, central bars, and environment. She will end by discussing how spiral arm counts may potentially provide clues to the nature of dark matter in the Universe.