Schedule of Events

FALL 2010

Tuesday Evenings at 7:30

September 28
October 19
November 30
in the GE Theatre at Proctors

Tickets available soon: $5 Students, $10 General,   $8 Members of Dudley Observatory

Anna Frebel - September 28, 2010
"Our cosmic ancestors: The oldest stars in the Universe "

There are stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy that are almost as old as the Universe itself, which is some 14 billion years. I will present some of those stellar fossils, and show what we can learn from studying them. This includes the origin and evolution of the chemical elements from which we humans and the world around us are made off. We really all are made from 'star stuff' and even a little bit of Big Bang material.

Dr. Frebel is currently a Clay Fellow at Harvard Center for Astrophysics. Her research interests broadly cover how the oldest stars can be used to learn about the very first stars, their supernova yields, and stellar nucleosynthesis. She is best known for her discoveries and subsequent spectroscopic analyses of the oldest stars, and how they can be employed to uncover information about the time shortly after the Big Bang. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and received her PhD from the Australian National University's Mt. Stromlo Observatory in 2006. Since then has received a numerous awards for her work.

Alex Filippenko - October 19, 2010
"Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe"

Observations of very distant exploding stars (supernovae) show that the
expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, rather than slowing down
due to gravity as expected.  Over the largest distances, our Universe seems to be dominated by a mysterious, repulsive "dark energy" that stretches the very
fabric of space faster and faster with time.

Alex Filippenko, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the world's most highly cited research astronomers. Winner of the top teaching awards at UC Berkeley, he was named the National Professor of the Year in 2006. He has produced several astronomy video courses for The Teaching
Company and appears in numerous television documentaries.

Jay Pasachoff - November 30, 2010
"The Sun and Solar Eclipses"

Pasachoff will describe the most recent of a series of eclipse observations, including Greece in 2006, Siberia in 2008, China in 2009, and Easter Island in 2010, and place ground-based eclipse observing in the context of contemporary solar research from the ground and from space."

Jay Pasachoff is especially known for his scientific work at total solar eclipses; the total solar eclipse of 11 July 2010 was his 51st! He worked at the Harvard College Observatory and Caltech before going to Williams College in 1972. He received the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society, "For his eloquent and informative writing of textbooks from junior high through college, For his devotion to teaching generations of students, For sharing with the world the joys of observing eclipses, For his many popular books and articles on astronomy, For his intense advocacy on behalf of science education in various forums, For his willingness to go into educational nooks where no astronomer has gone before"