Meeting date:
30 August 2022
Reporter:
Alison Chan
Visitors:
David Rosenbery
Meeting
Meeting opens with acknowledgement to Traditional Owners of the land.
Followed by a toast to Rotary International, and a second toast of friendship to Rotary Club of Bromley UK.
As part of Rotary Club of Bromley UK, International Service, at each of their Club meetings, make a toast of friendship to a Rotary Club in another country. This helps their members remember that they are all part of a large international organization with members who share their ideals. At their meeting on Tuesday the 30th of August, their members will raise a toast to “the President and members of the Rotary Club of Central Melbourne.”
They note that on this day in 1835 the City of Melbourne was founded.
On behalf of their President Charles Harmer and all the members of the Club, they send the members of RCM their very best wishes and greetings.
Guest Speaker:
Assoc Prof Michael Brown - School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University.
Topic: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Galaxies.
Michael is an observational astronomer whose research interest includes the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and the growth of galaxies over cosmic time. This research is undertaken in collaboration with Monash University PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and colleagues from around the world. Michael is best known for his measurements of galaxy growth over cosmic time and how galaxies populate dark matter halos.
James Webb Space telescope was launched from South American on Christmas Day last year high into the atmosphere and taken into orbit 1.5million kilometre from earth in a 10 year science mission of Distant galaxy and distance recording.
Why put a telescope in space?
Space telescope is located above the turbulent and moving atmosphere that causes motion of celestial objects, stars twinkle along the horizon at night, changing brightness and in colour. And it is distanced from the atmosphere of earth is warm which emits a lot of infra-red light (glowing sky).
- Light at a specific wavelength is blocked. For example carbon dioxide (CO) and water vapour (H2O)which is the green- house gas.
- Some molecule/atom glow resulting in a glow in the night sky. That is why you see mountain, building silhouetted against the night sky.
- It is very far from earth, so block sunlight from hitting telescope. It is very cold. The telescope does not glow so get good infra-red light of distant objects throughout the universe
JWST overcomes the distorted and blurred images of ground telescope and has a large telescope diameter than the Hubble space telescope, so has a larger collecting area.
JWT can achieve 0.08 arcsecond resolution) 45,000th of a degree).
JWT is 6.5 meter mirror with 18 hexagonal segments- ( 3x the diameter and 9x the collecting area of Hubble telescope).
The first lot of data started coming in the last couple of months on celestial objects: hours of data per object, atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars, regions of star formation in the Milky Way, Gas surrounding dying stars, Nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters, formation of new stars, gravitational lenses (gases and dark matter that can bend the light of more distant objects which distort the images giving an arc-like shape), and distant galaxies.
With Distant Galaxy one gets to look back in time. As light travels 300,000 km each second; therefore images of moon is seeing it as it was few second ago. Image of sun and planets is minutes or hours ago. Stars as they were years ago. Distant stars as it was centuries ago. Galaxies as they were millions or billions of years ago.
JWST is seeing galaxies from 13.5 billion in the past back, close to when the universe starts. As Galaxy can merge and expanding, change shape over million years ago, it is measured by how fast it is moving away from it (using Doppler shift of light stretched in the infra-red, wavelengths, chemical elements). Some galaxies are moving away at hundreds of km per second. Some lights had taken billions of years to reach us.
It is an exciting time for astronomy and global community as JWST collects more exquisite data daily and see celestial object and distant galaxy in unprecedented detail.
Q&A
- Telescope task from ground, has ability to schedule some processing itself
- Complimentary future missions and Astronomers can book time for telescope
- 10 year project mission, (unlike the hobble in low earth orbit with repair mission)
Announcements
The following milestones cover the period into our next Face-to-Face Meeting on 6th September
Partner Birthdays
Sue Duras, spouse of Peter Duras, 02 September
Rotarian joined:
Brett Jones, 4 years 11 months joined – September 20217
Campbell Chamber, 5 years 11 months – September 2016
No wedding anniversary
No Members’ Birthday
Background Regionalisation Project – Neville John
For the past three years, a group of members have been working on a pilot project to update the current 90 year model of supporting and governing Rotary and Rotaract clubs and members.
The project gives an opportunity to develop, test and evaluate a streamline governance approach. It will be a more inclusive approach, providing more club flexibility, cost efficiency and responsiveness, bring best resource to access, consolidate experience and talent, based on the following five key objectives:
- Support clubs to engage members, volunteers, and communities
- Create new attractive leadership roles and development opportunities
- Build stronger unified Rotary brand
- Encourage partnerships
- Improve efficiencies and reduce duplication
Details of the pilot project is posted on the club member website, and club members have been sent a link which includes the Rotary Zone 8 Regionalization vote this week. Members are invited to next Board meeting for the results of the member survey
Member Announcement
- David Rosenbery introduced himself to the club. First travel from Germany and first week in Melbourne Australia under the Rotary Exchange system. Express thanks for the opportunity. Violinist for 15 years
- Youth Project Raffle was drawn live at meeting. Winning tickets number 385, 253, 381
Thank you Campbell and Fundraising team for organising. Tickets sold raised monies for Youth Project refurbishment.
- Frank and Pauline O’Brien joins Port Fairy Rotary club for their tree planting project along Port Fairy Warrnambool Rail Track