Media
Cosmic Videos
Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Searching for Earth-like Planets with the Keck Planet Finder
The search for extrasolar planets has uncovered a dizzying array of planetary systems. We have found new planet types — lava worlds and super-Earths – as well as planets orbiting more than one star. These discoveries give us tantalizing clues about how our Solar System formed and point the way to detailed characterizations of Earth-like […]
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Astronomy Talk: Kepler, TESS, and Keck Observatory – Driving Our Understanding of Exoplanetary Systems
Guest Speaker: David Ciardi Chief Scientist NASA Exoplanet Science Institute Launched in 2009, NASA’s Kepler revolutionized our understanding of other worlds by discovering thousands of exoplanet systems. 10 years after Kepler ended, NASA launched TESS to continue the revolution by finding planets around brighter, nearby stars. Ground-based telescopes have been critical to understanding the planets […]
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Keck Observatory Donor Salon: Planet Nine from Outer Space
Five years ago, Dr. Brown and his team proposed that unexpected perturbations to the most distant known objects in our solar system could be explained by the existence of an unseen giant planet well beyond Neptune, gently tugging on these objects. Dr. Brown will provide an update on his progress in the search for Planet […]
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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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