“Tomodachi” is Japanese for “friend” and Tomodachi-kai is the local Japanese/American friendship club in Portland, OR.  Recently, they asked me to speak at their monthly meeting about my astro-photography.  Since I am not great at public speaking and have learned relatively little about astronomy during the last 11 years doing astro-photography, I asked Dr. Katherine Kornei, a real astronomer, to join me in a presentation titled “Exploring the Intersection of Art and Science”.

Using some of my astro-photos and a few graphics to illustrate such things as polar alignment, I talked about the techniques of capturing and processing astro-photos, while Katherine talked about the scientific significance of some of the objects in my photos.  She also did a hands-on activity in which the audience learned to identify different types of galaxies.

There were about 50 people in attendance – a pretty good turnout for Tomodachi-kai.  There were a lot of good questions from the audience and everyone seemed to have enjoyed the presentation, so I’m glad to have done it.  I might even be up for doing it again some day!

The presentation was followed by a catered lunch, during which there were more questions – and realizations of many things that we should have included in the presentation, but didn’t.  We probably could have gone on for hours!