Shakespeare Club: Shakespeareans go to the stars

This image of the Crab Nebula is one of the many clusters we are able to see with modern telescopy.

submitted Chris Kanta and Joan Gaughan, Shakespeare Club

In order to accommodate guests, the Club’s meeting on January 14 was held in the cafeteria of United Methodist Church and featured a guest speaker, Jeff Frush. Mr. Frush is an astrophysicist who has worked with NASA and several universities to design software that can enhance a telescope’s performance. His journey began with early influences such as the Apollo Missions and the series Star Trek. He showed us how he advanced from the first telescope he built to larger and more sophisticated ones that included observatories.

Mr. Frush began his presentation, My Adventures in Astronomy, by allowing the members of the audience to hold a surprisingly heavy iron meteorite. What distinguishes a meteorite from other chunks of iron is the process by which it is made: It can only be produced in zero gravity.

Mr. Frush’s extensive presentation was both informative and technical. He explained how a spectrometer can identify a material’s chemical composition and structure when applied to celestial bodies. A surprisingly large number of hours and a complex process are involved to produce one picture. Samples of his work included images he has taken within and outside our galaxy. We viewed asteroids with ion and dust tails, Apollo Mission tracks on the moon, supernovas, God’s Eye nebulae, Globular Cluster, the Seven Sisters star cluster, the Andromeda Galaxy, the sun and solar eclipse that we all witnessed this past May, the planet Mars, the rings around Saturn, and many more.

Among the questions posed to Mr. Frush in the Q & A were “Why is the sky blue?” and “Why do stars seem to twinkle but planets don’t?”

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.