2008 Podcasts

(December 11, 2008) Dr. Scott Dahm of the W. M. Keck Observatory has been using the 10-meter telescopes on Mauna Kea and the Spitzer Space Telescope to study how young stars provide clues about the formation of the Solar System and other planetary systems. Determining where planets come from is a key question in astronomy. Dr. Dahm provides a first-hand look at the research that is beginning to answer this question.

(November 6, 2008) Observations with the Keck telescopes are giving new clues to understanding dark matter, an as-yet-undetected component of the cosmos. What is dark matter? Where is it? How do astronomers know it exists? These questions and many more will be answered by Dr. Josh Simon of the California Institute of Technology in his lecture “The Dark Side of Galaxies”.

(October 30, 2008) In this lecture, part of the Sharing Astronomy with Kupuna program hosted by W. M. Keck Observatory, Ed Stevens of Kahu Ku Mauna presents Cultural Beliefs and Practices on Mauna Kea. Dr. Robert Goodrich of the W. M. Keck Observatory also presents Keck’s Greatest Hits: Top Astronomical Discoveries.

(July 24, 2008) Dr. Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism presents “Extrasolar Planets: The Last Decade, and the Next.” Before 1995 planets outside our Solar System were the stuff of science fiction, Star Wars and Star Trek. Now with nearly 300 exo-planets known, many of them discovered at Keck, we are focused on new challenges: finding planetary systems similar to our own Solar System and small rocky planets like Earth

(June 18, 2008) Dr. Gregory Laughlin from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his colleagues have been leading the way in the search for exoplanets, discovering about 60% of known planets around other nearby stars. For more than a decade, most of the planets that were identified are gas giant planets like our Jupiter. Now, the Keck Planet Hunters are driving the world’s largest telescope to find small rocky planets at distances that could harbor liquid water, a prerequisite for habitable worlds.

(May 22, 2008) Dr. Rafael Millan-Gabet from the California Institute of Technology presents “Planet Forming Disks - What We Can Learn by Combining the World’s Largest Telescopes.” His research examines physical conditions in the inner parts of disks around young stars, where planets like Earth are believed to form. Combining the largest existing telescopes so they act in concert, the Keck Interferometer, provides unprecedented detail, and allows us to infer crucial properties of exo-Earth nurseries.

(April 24, 2008) Dr. James Graham from the University of California at Berkeley presents “Planetary Debris Disks”. Planetary debris disks are circumstellar clouds of dust detected in young planetary systems. This dust is believed to be released by collisions between larger bodies such as comets, asteroids and even planets. Although this dust was discovered in the early 1980s, adaptive optics imaging from the Keck Observatory is now giving astronomers our first clear view of planetary debris disks in other planetary systems.

(February 10, 2008) Dr. Mike Bolte from the University of California Observatories discusses the enormous advances being made in the study of stellar evolution and the genesis of elements from the simple to the complex. Bolte and his collaborators make observations of the oldest stars and star clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy to better understand the first epoch of star formation. Catch a glimpse of the complex methodology and modeling required to measure the chemistry of the cosmos using the Keck telescopes.

(January 16, 2008) Dr. Richard Ellis discusses how using a pioneering technique called “gravitational lensing” allows an international team of astronomers to measure traces of the very first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. Richard, the Steele Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, and his colleagues have made remarkable progress uncovering the evolution of the early Universe – the light they measure began its journey to the Keck telescopes more than 13 billion years ago.