Media
Cosmic Videos
Keck Observatory Donor Salon: SCALES: A New Keck Instrument for Imaging Exoplanets at 1000 Wavelengths Simultaneously
Exoplanets are a class of astrophysical objects, like stars and galaxies, where a wide range of detection and characterization methods are necessary to understand their individual and collective properties. We live in an era where thousands of exoplanets have been discovered by indirect methods, which is helping us understand the statistics of planet populations. A […]
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Astronomy Talk: A Night in the Life of Keck Observatory
Guest Speaker: John O’Meara Chief Scientist W. M. Keck Observatory You’ve seen the discoveries, but how are they made? In this presentation, we follow the process of Keck Observatory’s science, from proposal to publication. Along the way, we’ll learn how our Hawaii staff prepares the Keck I and Keck II telescopes, configures the instruments, and […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Liger: A next-generation instrument for Keck Adaptive Optics
Keck Adaptive Optics (AO) has been revolutionary in making profound discoveries about our Universe like the first-ever directly-imaged extrasolar planets and our fundamental understanding of the supermassive black hole at our Galactic Center. In this next decade the Keck team is rapidly upgrading the AO system to include better on-sky performance for scientists to exploit. […]
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Astronomy Talk: Dwarf Galaxies, Dark Matter, and the Milky Way
Guest Speaker: Marla Geha Director, Yale Telescope Resources Professor, Astronomy Department, Yale University Dozens of small galaxies have been discovered orbiting our Milky Way galaxy over the past decade. These “ultra-faint” galaxies are less luminous than any other known galaxy, and are several million times fainter than the Milky Way itself. W. M. Keck Observatory […]
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Astronomy Talk: Hunting for the Most Distant Galaxies in the Universe
Guest Speaker: Taylor Hutchison Graduate Student Texas A&M University We understand very little about the first galaxies in the universe whose light has traveled over 12 billion years to reach our telescopes. The early universe was a much darker place, filled with neutral gas blocking starlight from traveling far from its source. However, some light […]
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Astronomy Talk With Keck Observatory (Virtual): The Surface of Europa: A Window to the Ocean Below
Jupiter’s moon Europa is a prime target for exploring habitability in the Solar System. Beneath a comparatively thin ice shell, Europa harbors a global, salty, liquid-water ocean that is likely in contact with a rocky seafloor. Its geologically young, fractured surface suggests a history of exchange between the ocean and surface environments, such that the […]
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Astronomy Talk: A Planet Not Our Own
Guest Speaker: Elizabeth Tasker Associate Professor Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) We thought we understood the planets of our solar system until we discovered new worlds beyond our own Sun – planets the size of Jupiter with orbits completed in an Earth day, planets with two suns in […]
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Astronomy Talk: Keck Observatory And The Ongoing Exoplanet Revolution
Guest Speaker: Chas Beichman Executive Director NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) The exoplanet revolution began in 1995 with the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of a “Hot Jupiter” orbiting the sun-like star 51 Pegasi. Thousands of planets have since been detected in the succeeding two decades, many of them either found by or validated with Keck Observatory. […]
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Astronomy Talk with Keck Observatory (Virtual): Advances in Keck Instrumentation and Future Discovery
The W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes are among the most scientifically productive on Earth. The two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Maunakea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers, and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. With support from the […]
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Astronomy Talk: Illuminating the Origins of the Universe’s Fastest Explosions
Guest Speaker: Wen-fai Fong Assistant Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University When we look at the night sky, we see a static universe. However, astronomical observational surveys have revealed that our universe is, in fact, ever-changing. This “transient” sky is owed to a myriad of cosmic events. While many sources of transient emission […]
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