Monthly Meetings

MONTHLY MEETING

Date: May 16, 2025
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: TAMU Physics Teaching Observatory Classroom, Fishtank Road, College Station, TX
Event open to: General Public - NO CHARGE TO ATTEND

Program Title: Pickering’s Computers: How the Women at Harvard Changed the Way We Look at the Universe

Program: This presentation will describe how the women “computers” working for Edward Pickering during the late 19th and early 20th centuries measured hundreds of thousands of stars on photographic plates from the Harvard Observatory. Women like Annie Jump Canon, Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury and others revolutionized the way we catalog and understand the stars.

The presentation will also talk about how YOU can become involved in this continuing effort with the American Association of Variable Star Observers - a fun group also started by Pickering!

Speaker: Mark Spearman, PhD

Dr. Mark Spearman has been observing stars with a telescope for almost 60 years. During that time he obtained a BS in physics and a PhD in industrial engineering, was a professor at Northwestern University, Georgia Tech, and department head at Texas A&M University. In 2001 he left academia, returned to Texas, and started the company, Factory Physics, Inc.

After building the Regina Caelorum Observatory in rural Robertson County, he joined AAVSO in 2014 and has submitted more than 700 observations of variable stars, supernovae, and exoplanet eclipses. He is married to Blair, and they have three grown children, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild. Blair and Mark live rural Robertson County where he grows hay and maintains the Regina Caelorum Observatory.