The Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley presents a public lecture series in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Talks take place from 11am until 12 noon on the third Saturday of each month.
Doors open thirty minutes before the talk and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. We would like to start the talks on time, and avoid disruption from people entering the auditorium during the talks, so please try to arrive at least 10 minutes before the start. Admission is free, but if you wish to support astronomy at UC Berkeley, you can donate here.
To sign up for our email list and receive notification about future talks, and other news from the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, please visit our mailing list page and enter your email details. We won't sell or give away your email and we won't send you lots of messages.
We are planning to continue the monthly talk series in 2010, with additional astronomy talks as well as talks on other science themes. Please stay tuned for more details.
The talks take place in the Genetics and Plant Biology Building, Room 100 (map square B-2). The December talk takes place during examinations at Berkeley and the venue will be announced closer to the date.
Limited hourly pay parking is available on weekends on and nearby campus - please check the signs. We encourage you to take public transport - BART and bus lines are within walking distance.
Stars and their planets are born inside dense clouds of gas and dust. These clouds are opaque to optical light, so one can witness the earliest stages of star formation only at radio wavelengths, via the weak signals emitted by molecules and dust grains. To obtain a clear view it is necessary to link together multiple radio telescopes, combining the signals from them with timing accuracies of a trillionth of a second. Dr. Plambeck will discuss both the technological challenges and recent discoveries, with examples from the recently completed CARMA telescope array in Eastern California.
Dick Plambeck is a research astronomer at UC Berkeley. He combines a scientist's interest in the processes involved in the birth of stars, with an engineer's interest in the methods used to study them, and a raconteur's talent for storytelling. He was involved in moving nine 20-foot-wide radio dishes hundreds of miles to a new site, and their subsequent positioning and calibrating to high accuracy in order to study the faint signals from gas and dust surrounding distant stars.
A copy of the poster advertising this talk is available here. You are welcome to print out copies.
| Date | Venue | Speaker | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 17 | 100 GPB | Geoff Marcy | The Search for Habitable Planets and Life in the Universe |
| February 21 | 145 Dwinelle | Eliot Quataert | Black Holes: Monsters Lurking at the Centers of Galaxies |
| March 21 | 100 GPB | Dan Werthimer | Is Anybody Out There? Searching for ET with Help from 8 Million Volunteers |
| April 18 (Cal Day) | Noon - 1pm, 100 GPB | Chung-Pei Ma | The Dark Side of the Universe |
| 1 - 2pm, 3 Le Conte | Dan Werthimer | Is Anybody Out There? (Repeat of March 21 talk) | |
| 2 - 3pm, 3 Le Conte | Steve Stahler | Why Are There Stars? New Answers to an Old Question | |
| May 16 | 100 GPB | James Graham | Imaging Planets Beyond the Solar System |
| June 20 | 100 GPB | Alex Filippenko | Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe |
| July 18 | 100 GPB | Roger Hahn | A Troublesome Pioneer: Galileo Galilei |
| August 15 | 100 GPB | David Lindberg and Steve Croft | Astronomy and Evolution: From the Death of the Dinosaurs to the Stardust in your Bones |
| September 19 | 100 GPB | Nathan Smith | Live Fast - Die Young: Monster Stars and their Temper Tantrums |
| October 17 | 100 GPB | Imke de Pater | Fascinating Objects in our Solar System |
| November 21 | 100 GPB | Maryam Modjaz | Cosmic Fireworks: The Explosive Deaths of Massive Stars |
| December 19 | TBA | Dick Plambeck | Star Formation through Radio Eyes |
UC Berkeley graduate students are also presenting some public lectures this year. Details are here.
The Lawrence Hall of Science holds Saturday night stargazing event on the first and third Saturday of every month (only when the weather is clear).
Stay tuned for news of other activities taking place at UC Berkeley and elsewhere during the International Year of Astronomy 2009, or join in UC Berkeley's year-long celebration of science, Science@Cal.
If you're on Facebook, you can join our Facebook group here.
You can listen to Steve Croft talk about the Berkeley IYA talks and his research activities here.
Videos of previous talks are availble below. Click the play button or double click in the center of the video to start. To watch in full screen mode, double click again (once the video is playing) in the center of the video.
On January 17, Geoff Marcy spoke about "The Search for Habitable Planets and Life in the Universe". You can watch the video of his talk below. A copy of the presentation (a 34 MB Powerpoint file) is available here.
On February 21, Eliot Quataert spoke about "Black Holes: Monsters Lurking at the Centers of Galaxies". You can watch the video of his talk below. A copy of the slides for this presentation (a 12 MB PDF) is available here.
You can also listen to this talk as a podcast - the slides should also display in iTunes or similar software. Click here for the 27 MB MPEG-4 audio file.
On March 21, Dan Werthimer gave a lecture entitled "Is Anybody Out There? Searching for ET with Help from 8 Million Volunteers". You can watch the video of his talk below.
On April 18, Chung-Pei Ma gave a lecture entitled "The Dark Side of the Universe". You can watch the video of her talk below.
Also on April 18, Steve Stahler gave a lecture entitled "Why Are There Stars? New Answers to an Old Question". You can watch the video of his talk below.
On May 16, James Graham gave a lecture entitled "Imaging Planets Beyond the Solar System". You can watch the video of his talk below.
On June 20, Alex Filippenko gave a lecture entitled "Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe". You can watch the video of his talk below.
On July 18, historian of science Roger Hahn gave a lecture entitled "A Troublesome Pioneer - Galileo Galilei". You can watch the video of his talk below.
On August 15, Steve Croft and biologist David Lindberg gave a lecture entitled "Astronomy and Evolution: From the Death of the Dinosaurs to the Stardust in your Bones". You can watch the video of their talk below.
On September 19, Nathan Smith gave a lecture entitled "Live Fast - Die Young: Monster Stars and their Temper Tantrums". The video was recorded by the folks at fora.tv so we're linking directly to their video below, as well as posting to Vimeo.
On October 17, Imke de Pater gave a lecture entitled "Fascinating Objects in Our Solar System". Once again the video was recorded by fora.tv and we're linking directly to it here.
On November 21, Maryam Modjaz gave a lecture entitled "Cosmic Fireworks: The Explosive Deaths of Massive Stars". We'll post the video of her talk here soon.
Thanks to Chris Klein (with assistance from Bethany Cobb) for producing the videos of the talks, to fora.tv for recording the September and October talks, and to all our volunteers from the astronomy department for helping out with organising this talk series.
Contact Steve Croft (scroft@astro.berkeley.edu / http://astro.berkeley.edu/~scroft/).