”What Does a Black Hole Look Like: How We Got our First Picture”
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 7 pm, Dr. Eliot Quataert, of the University of California, Berkeley, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:
”What Does a Black Hole Look Like: How We Got our First Picture”
in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos.
The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series at Foothill College, now in its 20th year.
Black holes are one of the most remarkable predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity: so much material is compressed into such a small volume that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes have also captured the public imagination, and are commonly featured in popular culture, from Star Trek to Hollywood movies. In Spring 2019, the world-wide Event Horizon Telescope released the first real (non-Hollywood!) picture of gas around a black hole and the “shadow” it makes as the gas swirls into the black hole. Dr. Quataert will describe how these observations were made and what they have taught us about black holes.
Eliot Quataert is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at UC Berkeley and the Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center. He is an astrophysics theorist who works on a wide range of problems, from stars and black holes to how galaxies form. He has received a number of national awards for his research and is also a highly regarded teacher and public lecturer.
We get large crowds for these talks, so we ask people to try to arrive a little bit early to find parking. The lecture is free, but there is a charge of $3 for parking on campus and exact change is appreciated.
Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Lost Altos.
Directions and Parking information
Campus Map
Past Lectures
”Meet the Neighbors: Planetary Systems Orbiting Nearby Stars”as Ever Explored”
On Wednesday, November 13, 2019 at 7 pm, Dr. Courtney Dressing, of the University of California, Berkeley, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:
”Meet the Neighbors: Planetary Systems Orbiting Nearby Stars” in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos.
The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series at Foothill College, now in its 20th year.
The NASA Kepler mission revealed that our Galaxy is teeming with planetary systems and that Earth-sized planets are common. However, most of the planets detected by Kepler orbit stars too faint to permit detailed study. The NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS,) launched in 2018, is finding hundreds of small planets orbiting stars that are much closer and brighter. Dr. Dressing will describe the TESS mission and explain how analyses of the TESS planets will allow us to probe the composition of small planets, investigate the formation of planetary systems, and set the stage for the next phase of exoplanet exploration: the quest for the signatures of life in the atmospheres of strange new worlds.
Courtney Dressing is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an observational astronomer focused on detecting and characterizing planetary systems. Her research group uses telescopes on the ground and in space to search for planets, determine their orbital parameters, measure their masses, and constrain their bulk compositions. She is curious about planet formation and evolution, the frequency of planetary systems in the Galaxy, and the prospects for detecting life on planets outside of our Solar System. In 2019, she was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Hellman Fellowship, and a Packard Fellowship.
The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* The Foothill College Physical Science Division
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
* NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Past lectures in the series can be found on YouTube.
