Our first meeting of the 2024-2025 Season and it promises to be a good one. Our meetings are free for members. Non members can attend once for free and are then encouraged to join the society.

We’re very happy to have Dr. Deborah Lokhorst present to us (Research Officer at the NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)

Presentation : ‘Unveiling the low surface brightness Universe with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array’

Brief :

The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is a novel telescope that was built to image very low surface brightness structures (such as galaxies that are large on the sky but extremely faint) that are prohibitively difficult (if not impossible) to detect with conventional telescopes. The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is uniquely able to detect low surface brightness phenomena due to its specialized design: Dragonfly is a mosaic telescope built from tens (and soon to be hundreds) of off-the-shelf Canon telephoto lenses. I’ll talk about the design of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array and its discoveries since it was built in 2014, which range from uncovering a new type of galaxy to finding huge gas clouds outside of galaxies. I’ll finish with describing progress towards our ultimate goal of mapping the “cosmic web” of dark matter.

Bio :

Dr. Deborah Lokhorst is a Research Officer at the NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre, where she is researching the circumgalactic medium by developing, building, and operating new telescopes to directly map extragalactic line emission. She received her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2022 from the University of Toronto after completing her BSc in Physics & Astronomy at the University of Victoria. Dr. Lokhorst employs many different methods to carry out her research, including computational theoretical work, the collection and analysis of observational data, and opto-mechanical engineering design and construction.

After this presentation will be our AGM. Paid members should have received details of this by email.