Astro Night – May 5th

Fri, May 06, 2016

EVENT TIMES AND LECTURE INFORMATION

Doors: 7:15 pm
Talk: 7:45 pm – 8:45 pm
Stargazing*: 8:45 pm – 10:15 pm

Lauren Weiss (UCB) – "The Search for Planets Like Earth"

Humanity has long wondered if life thrives elsewhere among the cosmos. In the past 25 years, we have made strides by finding over 4000 extra-solar planets. In this lecture, we will take a virtual tour of landmark planet discoveries, including recent highlights from NASA's Kepler Mission. These planets, and planets yet to be discovered, will teach us whether rocky, water-bearing worlds like Earth are rare or abundant in the Universe.

Lauren Weiss is a Ken & Gloria Levy Graduate Student Fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on finding and characterizing extra-solar planets, and in particular determining the compositions of small extra-solar planets and mapping the architectures of multi-planet systems. Lauren is planning on graduating with her PhD at the end of this school year.

*NOTE*: Stargazing is dependent on weather conditions; lectures will always occur as scheduled. For more information please visit the Astro Night event page.