PALS - 2016-17

Speaker: Gerard Williger

Abstract: Most stars in the sky do not change much with respect to each other. Many other things do: eclipses happen, planets move and some stars flare up or get dim.  We will review transient phenomena through history, and connect them to research today, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, to which Kentucky is contributing.  We will also give special attention to the big solar eclipse next August.

Speaker: Chris Graney

Abstract: This talk will focus on William Whewell (1794 -- 1866) of Cambridge University in England. His prescient insights regarding the nature of the solar system and its possible inhabitants went strongly against the prevailing thought of his time, and are relevant to our time as well.

Speaker: James T. Laureosch

Abstract: These ripples in space-time were just discovered in the past two years -- after Albert Einstein predicted them a century ago. Learn what they are and how we finally managed to detect them.

Speaker: Timothy Dowling, University of Louisville

Abstract: NASA successfully inserted its $1.1 billion dollar Juno spacecraft into Jupiter orbit on July 4, and in October started an unprecedented sequence of 37 2-week-long science orbits of the giant planet. This talk updates the latest results from the mission and describes how the science experiments work. Establishing the depth of Jupiter’s winds is one of key goals of the Juno mission, along with determining the water abundance and whether Jupiter formed in place, or as the leading theory now suggests, migrated inward from the colder neighborhood of Neptune.

About the speaker: Dr. Dowling is a foremost expert on Jupiter’s atmospheric dynamics. His work has shown that Jupiter’s jet streams, its brown and white stripes, are likely to be quite deep, which was a controversial result when it was first published in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Speaker: Lutz Haberzettl, University of Louisville

Abstract: Telescopes are astronomers' most important tools, their laboratory apparatus if you so will. With their invention in the early 17th century, telecopes allowed a closer and more detailed look into the Universe and helped to increase vastly our knwoledge and understanding of its formation and evolution. With each milestone in the development of telescope technology, astronomers were able to pierce more deeply into the outer regions of the Universe all the way back in time to the first generations of stars and galaxies. We will explore the history of telescope development from the first simple, small lensed tubes to the largest, highly complex systems under construction today. We will discover how new technology opened up different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and allowed for a new understanding of astrophysical processes.