The Cape Cod Astronomical Society usually holds a monthly meeting, with a guest speaker, in the DYHS school library (the library is in the front right-side of the school as you face it from Station Avenue) which is located at:
Dennis-Yarmouth High School
210 Station Ave, South Yarmouth, MA 02664
The meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month beginning at 7:30pm. After the guest speaker has concluded their engagement, society members will usually have a discussion of society interests.
During the Covid-19 emergency, physical meetings and our dinner (see below) have been suspended. However, efforts are being made to have meetings online. Check with First Light Lite and our Society calendar to see what events are being scheduled.
Gus Romano or his delegate “host” a dutch-treat dinner gathering for members and friends of the Society each meeting night. The speaker for each meeting is always invited. Please join the group to dine and talk about all things interesting, including astronomy! Check the calendar for time and location information.
* If you would like to give a talk, either as the main speaker of the evening, or as an ancillary speaker, please notify Jim Lynch at jlynch@whoi.edu.
This list is not just a catalogue of the great speakers and talks we’ve enjoyed over the past few years, on a wide variety of astronomical topics (both amateur and professional), but a thank you to all those speakers, especially the ones from the Covid era (March 2020 – May 2022) who have interacted with us only via Zoom talks. Zoom was a life saver, but didn’t have the same personal touch. But, as per 2022, we now have a Zoom and/or Live option, which gives us added flexibility. Some things turn out well in the end!
2021 Speakers
January 2021 – Dr. Jim Lynch, CCAS. “What are Time and Space?”
February 2021 – Dr. James Head, Brown University. “The Chinese Space Program.”
March 2021 – Dr. Jim Gates, Brown University and Ms. Cathie Pelletier. “Proving Einstein Right.”
April 2021 – Dr. Emily Levesque, University of Washington. “The Last Stargazers.”
May 2021 – Dr. Keith Thorne, Caltech/LIGO Livingston. “Listening for Bumps in the Ocean of Night: Discovering Gravitational Waves With LIGO.”
June 2021 – Mr. George Silvis, CCAS/AAVSO. “SIDS, SNEWS, and AAVSO.”
July 2021 – Dr. Tom Spirock, Stellafane. “Lucky Imaging Results Using the 13” Schupmann Telescope at Stellafane and the 6” Warmer and Swasey Refractor at Mount Wilson.”
August 2021 – Dr. Antony Stark, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics “The CMB-S4 Experiment”
September 2021 – Dr. Jim Lynch, CCAS and WHOI. “An Introduction to CCAS and Amateur Astronomy.”
October 2021 – Dr. Jim Head, Brown University. “Life on Mars: Was Mars’ Ancient Climate ‘Warm and Wet’ or “Cold and Icy.’”
November 2021 – Dr. Daniel Davis, Stony Brook University. “Turning Left for Three Decades: Still Gazing After all These Years.”
December 2021 – Dr. Delilah Gates, Princeton University. “Observational Signatures of Black Holes: Learning from Light?”
2022 Speakers
January 2022 – Mr. Charles Law, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “A New View on the Universe: the James Webb Space Telescope.”
February 2022 – Dr. Jim Lynch, Mr. Charlie Burke, Dr. Mike Hunter. CCAS. “CCAS: Current Status and Future Plans.”
March 2022 – Mr. Stephen LaFlamme, CCAS. “My career as an amateur astronomer.”
April 2022 – Dr. Hugh H. Crowl, Bennington College. “How Do Galaxies Lose Their Gas? Galaxy Transformation in the Virgo Cluster.”
May 2022 – Dr. Jim Lynch, CCAS , “A Two-Part Invention”
June 2022 – Dr. Larry Marschall, Gettysburg College, “The Astronomer’s Disappearing Sky”
July 2022 – Dr. Antony Stark, HSCfA, “Astronomy’s Final Frontier: the Dark Ages at High Redshift”
August 2022 – Steve LaFlamme, CCAS. “Astrophotography From A Home Observatory.”
September 2022 – Open Zoom meeting on CCAS affairs.
October 2022 – James Lowenthal, Smith College, “Unscrambling the view from Earth of the brightest starburst galaxies”
November 2022 – Dr. Martin Elvis, HSCfA. “Asteroids – How love, fear and greed will determine our future in space.”
December 2022 – Dr. Nathan Whitehorn, Michigan State University. “Neutrino Astronomy.”
2023 Speakers
January 2023 – No speaker.
February 2023 – Dr. Or Graur, University of Portsmouth. “The science of exploding stars.”
March 2023 – Dr. Jim Lynch. “Dark matter.”
April 2023 – Dr. Jim Head, Brown University. “Future Lunar destinations for China’s Chang’e 6,7 and 8 missions.”
May 2023 – Dr. Laura McLaughlin, W. Virginia University. “The hunt for monster black holes with pulsar timing arrays.”
June 2023 – Dr. Peter Plavchan, George Mason University. “Exoplanets.”
July 2023 – Dr. Giuseppina Fabiano, HSCfA. “Chandra and the supermassive black hole (SMBH) / Galaxy interaction.”
August 2023 – Dr. Antony Stark, HSCfA. “The golden age of cosmology.”
September 2023 – Dr. Manasvi Lingam, Florida Institute of Technology. “Life in the cosmos.”
October 2023 – Dr. Martina Arndt, Bridgewater State University. “The beauty and science of solar eclipses.”
November 2023 – Dr. Frank Isik, CCAS. “Terrestrial and space-based telescopes on the horizon.”
December 2023 – Dr. Jim Lynch, CCAS, and Mr. Yaz Aubrey, Falmouth Academy. “How the first stars and galaxies formed revisited.”
2024 Speakers
January 2024 – No speaker.
February 2024 – Dr. Sarah Wellons, Wesleyan University. “Simulating the growth of galaxies and supermassive black holes.”