SFAA Lecture: Astronomical Curiosities

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The San Francisco Amateur Astronomers are pleased to welcome Dr Robert Douglas. This event is free and open to the public.

Interested in astronomy? Take a reader’s journey to discover the odd, the unusual, and the just plain strange. Fifty-nine sign-post topics address wide-ranging subjects: the ancients’ attempts to interpret the night sky, the enigmatic green flash (now you see it, now you don’t), superluminal speed, chaos on the surface of Europa, deflecting objects on a collision course with Earth, the fate of the Sun, the solar system’s highest cliff, and how you can measure the speed of light by popping marshmallows into your microwave.

Since childhood Robert Douglas has been interested in astronomy and science fiction. He is an active night-sky observer using several telescopes he has acquired over the years. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1968 from the University of Washington, Seattle. After spending an International Combinatorial Year in the Department of Statistics at UNC Chapel Hill, he joined the mathematics faculty at San Francisco State University. Additionally, he has been a member of the computer science faculty since the department’s inception in 1983. He remained at SFSU (with brief time off for sabbaticals at Harvard and the University of Washington and to study computer science at MIT on an NSF grant) until his retirement as Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science in 2000. He is a member of the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers, the Eastbay Astronomical Society, the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, the Planetary Society, and the American Mathematical Society. He has traveled to Australia nine times for its night skies, a journey he hopes all amateur observational astronomers and astrophotographers can make at least once in a lifetime.

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