Special Events
The next meeting of the Chicago Astronomical Society will be Saturday, March 28, 2026.
5:00 PM -- Astro-talk over pizza and soft drinks. (Donations are welcome to offset the cost of food and beverage.)
6:00 PM -- The lecture will begin.
8:00 PM -- If the weather permits and it's clear and temperatures are above 20° F, there will be telescopic viewing of the Moon and Jupiter.
Program Title: Chasing Aurorae Across Time
Speaker: Robin Metcalfe, PhD from York University, Canada
Summary: Historical records as old as the first millennium BCE contain reports of mysterious glowing lights in the night sky, some of which have been attributed to aurorae. But how do we know that celestial phenomena described vaguely as an “unusual red glow”, “a pre-dawn rainbow” or “a five-coloured light” can definitively be connected to auroral activity? In this talk, we will see that aurorae leave behind breadcrumbs in unusual places, enabling us to chase them across time, both deep into the past and far into the future. We will also discuss how our ability to predict their likelihood has enabled us to capture their ethereal beauty with nothing more than a mobile phone.
Who is Robin Metcalfe? Robin Metcalfe is a professor at York University, where she has been teaching astronomy for over 25 years. Robin’s PhD research pertained to extragalactic astronomy but her current interests are in the search for life beyond Earth and the implications of such a discovery on humanity. Through her teaching, Robin shares her passion for the night sky and the outdoors. She teaches students to appreciate what the night sky has to teach us, to gain perspective from our place in the Universe, and to value our precious planet Earth.
Click on image for downloadable PDF.
