Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/09/2018
6:45 pm
Location
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Category(ies)
Since the past year has seen some of the most-revolutionary discoveries in the history of astronomy, the 2018 Series promises to be especially exciting; it includes two of our finest young postdoctoral fellows—Drs. Marja Seidel and Maria Drout—along with top scientists from Harvard and JPL.
There will be four Astronomy Lectures this year and they will also be streamed live online.
While the Series is free, ticket reservations are required, and will be available for each individual Lecture in advance (instead of the entire Series at once):
- Lectures are in Rothenberg Auditorium.
- Doors open at 6:45pm.
- Lectures start at 7:00pm.
Monday, April 9th 2018:
Sharing the Wonders of the Light and Dark Universe
– Dr. Marja Seidel, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Carnegie Observatories
What is the Universe made of? We can peer millions of years into the past in the night sky, yet we barely understand just 5 percent: the “regular” matter that we can see. In the standard cosmological model, a quarter of the remaining 95 percent is dark matter. Dr. Seidel will discuss her quest to understand dark matter, and her experiences bringing astronomy education to some of the most remote and under-served locations on Earth.
Registration opens March 9th.
Watch live.
Monday, April 23, 2018:
A Tale of Asteroid Families
– Dr. Joseph Masiero, Scientist & NEOWISE Deputy-PI, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
The formation of our Solar System was a chaotic collapse of gas and dust into the Sun, planets, asteroids, and comets we have today, punctuated by catastrophic collisions between these forming bodies. Dr. Masiero will discuss how the asteroid families in the belt today are the last remnants of these massive collisions, and give us a window into the processes that shaped our Solar System.
Registration opens April 10th.
Watch live.
Monday, May 7, 2018:
Dark Energy and Cosmic Sound
– Dr. Daniel Eisenstein, Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University
Director, Sloan Digital Sky Survey III
Sound waves propagating through the Universe only 400,000 years after the Big Bang now offer some of our most-precise measures of the composition and history of the Universe. In the last decade, we have detected the fossil imprint of these sound waves using maps of the distribution of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Dr. Eisenstein will describe these waves and the ambitious experiments that use them to extend our cosmological reach.
Registration opens April 24th.
Watch live.
Monday, May 21, 2018:
Astronomical Alchemy: The Origin of the Elements
– Dr. Maria Drout, Hubble, Carnegie-Dunlap Fellow, Carnegie Observatories
As Carl Sagan once said, “We are made of star stuff.” However, each element has its own astronomical origins story. Elements are created everywhere from the centers of stars, to supernovae explosions, to the Big Bang itself. Dr. Drout will take us on a journey through the periodic table, highlighting how our recent discovery of a ‘kilonova’ associated with the cataclysmic merger of two neutron stars has filled in one of the final pieces of the elemental puzzle: the origin of many of the heaviest elements in the universe.
Registration opens May 8th.
Watch live.
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