WE are delighted to announce that we have got the well known and eminent Guy Consolmagno to give us our talk next Thursday in Gonzaga.
Guy is speaking at Whirlpool in Birr which begins on the Friday after our meeting and with the help and influence of Gonzaga he has kindly consented to come a day early and give us a talk.
The title of the talk is "Why does the Pope have an Astronomer".
The co-author of "Turn Left at Orion" with Dan Davis, there is an excellent interview with both himself and Dan Davis in this month's Arcturus. This can be found at
www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...8888-arc_sept_05.pdf
We would expect that there will be great demand for places and they are limited.
Places can be reserved on a first come first served basis, so anybody interested can do so by emailing me at the info@southdublinastronomy.org
The details are Gonzaga at 8.00 pm on Thursday the 6th October next and entry is free as usual.
The following taken from his website
homepage.mac.com/brother_guy
is a short Biography
Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ was born in Detroit, Michigan. He earned undergraduate and masters' degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona, worked at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.
At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, his research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies, observing uiper Belt comets with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and curating the Vatican meteorite collection.
Along with more than 100 scientific publications, he is the author of a number of books including Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis) and Brother Astronomer.
Dr. Consolmagno's work has taken him, literally, around the world. In 1996, he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with a team on the blue ice regions of East Antarctica. He has served on the governing boards of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences, and the Meteoritical Society, and in 2003 he was elected president of IAU Commission 16 (Planets and Satellites). In 2000, the small bodies nomenclature committee of the IAU named an asteroid, 4597 Consolmagno, in recognition of his work.
  