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 size of the Earth rise up, cool and sink down, causing turbulence that ring stars like a bell. The frequencies of such sound waves are directly related to basic properties such as size and structure, in a similar way as music instruments with different sizes have a different natural pitch. In this talk Professor Huber will give an overview of the latest discoveries in asteroseismology – the study of stellar oscillations – including how stellar sound waves are used to explore the interior of stars, stellar populations in our galaxy, and the planets that orbit them. He will also show how one of the newest instruments at Keck Observatory – the Keck Planet Finder – is allowing astronomers to listen to the sound of the coolest stars that have yet been probed using this method.

 

Guest Speaker

Daniel Huber

Associate Professor
Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi

Daniel Huber is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi. Dan was born and raised in Vienna, Austria, and earned his PhD from the University of Sydney, Australia. Prior to joining the UH faculty in 2017 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA, and as an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Sydney.  Dan's research interests span the study of stars and stellar populations in our galaxy, including the discovery and characterization of exoplanets, using ground and space-based telescopes such as Kepler/K2, TESS and Keck. His work has been recognized through the award of a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2014), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2019), the University of Hawaii Board of Regents' Excellence in Research Award (2020) and the University of Hawai‘i Institute for Astronomy Director’s Award (2023).