Media
Cosmic Videos
Astronomy Talk: NASA: Exploring the Secrets of the Universe and Improving Life on Earth
Guest Speaker Thomas H. Zurbuchen Former Head of Science NASA Ever since NASA was established in 1958, expanding human knowledge of Earth, atmospheric phenomena, and space has been NASA’s priority. Discoveries made with both robotic and human exploration has changed how we think about the universe, our planet, and life beyond our planet. Dr. Zurbuchen […]
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Astronomy Talk: Getting a Sharp Look at Dark Matter
Guest Speaker Chris Fassnacht Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy University of California, Davis Look around you. Everything that is familiar to us, what we would call “normal” matter, makes up just a tiny fraction of what is out there. Instead, the universe is dominated by the dark side, and the question of what makes […]
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Astronomy Talk: Searching for Distant Galaxies Using Keck and JWST
Guest Speaker Rebecca Larson NSF Fellow, Ph.D. Astronomy Student The University of Texas at Austin We’ll go on a journey of discovery that started with a small blip in Hubble images, became a fully-confirmed galaxy after Keck Observatory confirmed the (surprisingly bright) hydrogen signature, and is now a fully-characterized and incredibly interesting galaxy with JWST […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon Talk: First Images of Exoplanets With the Webb Telescope and a Look Forward to Keck’s New Exoplanet Imager
Guest Speaker: Dr. Andy Skemer Associate Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics University of California Santa Cruz This past summer at UC Santa Cruz, an international team of astronomers assembled to produce the first images and spectra of exoplanets taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Dr. Skemer will give a first-hand account of these […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Discovering Planets With the Keck Planet Finder
Guest Speaker: Dr. Andrew Howard Astronomy Professor, Division of Physics, Mathematics, & Astronomy California Institute of Technology Keck Observatory’s newest instrument is the Keck Planet Finder (KPF), a spectrometer that will allow for the discovery of smaller planets than ever before, including Earth-mass planets orbiting nearby stars. KPF uses the latest technology to make ultra-precise […]
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Astronomy Talk: The Sound of Stars
Guest Speaker Dan Huber Associate Astronomer University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Although we cannot hear it with our own ears, the Sun and other stars in the sky have been performing a concert for billions of years. Similar to a boiling pot of water, gas cells on the surface of stars that are the […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Unveiling Outflowing Galactic Winds with the Keck Cosmic Web Imager
Guest Speaker: Dr. Alison Coil Associate Dean in Division of Physical Sciences, Professor of Physics University of California at San Diego In this talk, research will be presented that Dr. Coil and collaborators have been leading on extremely fast outflowing galactic winds being ejected from compact, starburst galaxies. Such outflows are thought to be a […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Forming Stars, Planets, and Scientists: Keck’s Transformative Role in Both Science and Education
Guest Speaker: Dr. Quinn Konopacky Astrophysicist & Associate Professor University of California at San Diego The birth of stars is a complex and dynamic process, one that leads eventually to the formation of planets and possibly life. Yet we still know very little about the way in which the Universe turns a massive cloud of […]
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Astronomy Talk: Truth is Stranger than (Science) Fiction
Guest Speaker Jessie Christiansen Astrophysicist NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech We speculated about the existence of planets orbiting other Suns for hundreds, if not thousands of years before their existence was finally confirmed. During that time we invented and depicted many new and now iconic sci-fi worlds – mysterious planets with exotic landscapes, orbiting […]
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Astronomy Talk: Origin of Earth’s Water
Guest Speaker Karen Meech Astronomer Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai`i at Manoa No one knows if our solar system, with a planet possessing the necessary ingredients for life within our Sun’s habitable zone, is a cosmic rarity. Nor do we know whether the gas giants in our solar system played a role in helping […]
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