There is no club speaker presentation in December or January.
5 Feb. 2026 – Club Meeting Presentation
— Thursday night, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
This free speaker presentation will be offered in-person at the
UNC-Asheville Reuter Center and virtually online. Registration is not required; use this Zoom link to watch the presentation remotely.
Although parking is free for this event at the UNC-Asheville Reuter Center, you must register your vehicle with a “Visitor 5pm – 6am” permit type at this link. Once registration is complete, visitors will not need to print or display a permit; the system utilizes camera-based License Plate Recognition technology. All vehicles must park front-end in, so that the license plate is visible.
An Astronomy Guest Speaker Series Event – a collaboration of the Astronomy Club of Asheville and UNC-Asheville
Are We Alone? Exploring the Cosmos with the World’s Largest Telescopes
– presented by
Dr. Luis Agustín Chavarría Garrido,
Visiting Assistant Professor and Astronomer,
UNC-Asheville
Are we alone in the Universe? This question has inspired human curiosity for centuries, and today it drives some of the most ambitious scientific projects on Earth. Two of them — the Extremely Large Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope (both located in Chile) — will soon become the most powerful telescopes ever built. These engineering marvels are designed to reveal planets orbiting other stars, study their atmospheres, and search for worlds that might resemble our own. With their extraordinary capabilities, they will transform our understanding of the cosmos — and perhaps even our understanding of ourselves.