This is surely a central and very important club activity. All Board members are encouraged to contact me with agenda items. Our guest speaker was Dr. Jonathan McDowell from the CfA, who gave an outstanding presentation on the latest research on quasars. Quasars live in the center of host galaxies. At the center of a quasar is a rapidly spinning super massive black hole.
Gas falls towards the hole but some misses and forms an accretion disk.
The rate of accretion is so high that the energy output due to the infalling matter is a thousand times greater than the galaxy's itself. Thick gas clouds around the hole absorb radiation, making the central disk invisible from some directions. At the business meeting club officers gave their reports. Then Joseph astounded us by announcing that John Dobson would be the speaker at March's meeting. He also reported that more than fifty people have signed up for the solar eclipse trip to Hungary.