LAHORE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Oldest Astronomical Society of Pakistan
established 1994
Monthly Meeting - January 2020
A report by Arshad Aleem
A DRIVE INSIDE THE SUN - BY MAROOF MIAN
The New Year boots up with a real science oriented talk by Senior Vice President of Lahore Astronomical Society, Mr. Maroof Mian. Instead of opting for "documentary available facts", Mr. Maroof targeted the science behind the phenomenon driving our very own Star.
Mr. Maroof Mian has been an Electrical Engineer and has led an exemplary career in Embedded Software Industry - totally divergent from Astronomy / Physics. Listening about deep Astronomy through him truly depicts that he has invested a lifetime exploring the secrets of the Universe.
Refreshments and post session Lunar observation with a dobsonian 254 mm telescope was also arranged by LAST.
Monthly Meeting - December 2019
Meeting Report by Arshad Aleem
It was an engaging talk by the Carl Sagan of Pakistan: Umair Asim! The whole talk was a Q&A session where members of Lahore Astronomical Society were asking questions on any area of Astronomy. The talk included discussion about discovery of Asteroid and Solar System, Milkyway's own supermassive black-hole Sagittarius A* and the M-87 supermassive black hole. Concept of black hole, its Event Horizon was also described. What would happen to Solar System's planets and to their orbits if the Sun is supposedly replaced by a same massed Black hole. Life cycle of star and formation of Iron in massive star’s core were also shed light upon. Chandrasekar limit and Supernovae were also chattered upon. It was interesting to know that type 1A supernova never changes its luminosity and is a distance measuring scale for Astronomers. Q&A lasted a long time even after the session ended!
Current level of curiosity about Astronomy in people - specially kids - indicates a better future for Astronomy.
We should acknowledge the efforts put forth by LAST's Senior members and specially sir Umair Asim who make their telescopes, home observatory - and all possible resources dedicated for making Astronomy reachable for general public. After each meeting, interested participants view the Astronomy books available at the observatory, and can also borrow the books for limited duration.
Every talk is followed by a telescopic observation.. This time we looked at the moon with 10 inch aperture dobsonian telescope.
Thanks to our event manager - Âlpha Bhatti - for managing it well.
Science And Religion by Umair Asim, May 2019
Group picture after the meeting.
The speaker for this monthly meeting was the President of Lahore Astronomical Society, Mr. Umair Asim. He was with us live, via Skype. The talk started around 5:20 pm and went on for about 70 minutes with Q&A session taking another 20 minutes, bringing the total time to about 90 minutes.
A challenging topic, open Q&A session and the post-talk discussions and comments; these made this event quite special.
The talk began by Umair Asim sahib giving a comparison between religion and science. It was followed up by talking about different levels of understanding ‘the reality’ and attempting to create an acute awareness of a philosophical and epistemological background of the subject. A clear attempt was made to let the audience get a taste of how deep some questions, thoughts and arguments can get when it comes to addressing things like noumena / phenomena, experience / description of an experience, evidence, correlation, proof and the law of causality.
The speaker helped the audience sail beautifully through these hard-to-explain concepts while navigating carefully around controversial areas. Theological and philosophical references were given with frequency to clarify a particular point. The speaker stressed on the distinction between science and religion as two separate entities and suggested one should not mix the two, based on epistemological principles.
The most beautiful part of the presentation was the simplicity and a sense of cynicism with which Umair sahib was able to carry this difficult topic forward. Questions were asked at the end of the talk and it was very obvious how some of the things struck a chord in people and their curiosities. We had to actively tell our audience to keep their questions solitary, short and crisp; but this particular suggestion was seldom followed. It was an enlightening experience, overall. Participants were engaged in discussions after the talk, at the refreshments table.
Where this talk, very successfully, gave us an intellectual tool on how to think about these two entities, it also precipitated a barrage of unanswered and unsettling questions. I, personally, would not be surprised if these questions and deep thoughts on this topic keep coming back for the speaker to address for some time to come. This talk was like someone throwing a stone in a lake. The stone being a greater awareness of the enormity of some thoughts and ideas and the lake being our everyday states of mind, as mundane as us.
Lahore Astronomical Society thanks the speaker, Mr. Umair Asim for his time, its event manager, Mr. Alpha Bhatti for organising and managing this event and all participating members for making this a success.
Astrogeology, April 2019
Report by Roshaan Bukhari
Monthly meeting for April 2019 was titled ‘Astrogeology: Geology of Luna and Terrestrial Planets’. It was a talk given by Mr. Saif Ur Rehman, who is a graduate in Geological Engineering from UET, Lahore.
This was Saif’s first presentation in LAST. The talk was immensely informative, had hands-on demonstration where the speaker shared with the audience rocks of different compositions, demonstrated the use of a geological hammer and showed a couple of rock core samples as well.
Saif’s presentation was full of humor, information, awe inspiring facts and details of technical processed which enable us to understand how we know what we know about the Earth’s deep interior structure and how rock formations on the surface tell us about Earth’s past.
One of the most amazing things that the speaker was able to do was connect what we know about Earth to other places in the solar system. He frequently compared Earth’s geological findings with the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars. We learned how the interior of planets (and the Moon) affect volcanism, plate tectonics and surface features observed today.
Saif was able to merge humor with information in the most unique way we’ve ever had at any LAST lecture. He showed clips from the movie ‘Ice Age’ where solar system’s and Earth’s history are shown in the most ridiculous and funny way. Saif was quick to switch over to graphics that show how the system was actually made and the similarities between the movie clips and how things really look like today. Inspired from the multi-cultural setting of Pakistan, Saif made us get familiar with geological terms in Urdu, Punjabi and to the surprise of us all; Hindi. This was extremely entertaining and everyone enjoyed this rare combination of languages the most!
We congratulate Saif Ur Rehman for giving his first talk at LAST and on being so wonderfully successful at keeping the talk super interesting even after the 2-hour mark.
Mighty Martian Mysteries, March 2019 Monthly Meeting
Report by Mr Alpha (Event Manager)
The talk was given by Mr. Roshaan Bukhari and as always it was very informative and delightfully entertaining for all the attendees. Mars is a special interest for everyone, for some it’s our closest habitable neighbor for others just an awe of perspective.
The Mighty Mysteries that were shown and discussed how they were form really mesmerized the crowd, the highest point of the mountain in our solar system to the depth of the valleys, the size and width of the canyon range, tell tail signs of liquid flow, different deposits found and analyzed by the continuous effort of NASA keeping presence on the Red planet or observation in one form or another. The technological developments that lead to more improved and enhanced results and what the future might hold such ideas where exchanged.
I would say every single one of the attendees enjoyed the experience and left home with few topics on mind in which more reading would be triggered to feed the curiosity of Astronomer inside of everyone of us.