2007 Carnegie Astronomy Lecture Series at the Huntington
All lectures are free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Please arrive early.
For the fifth consecutive season, the lectures will be held in Friends’ Hall at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, California (visit www.huntington.org for directions).
Parking is free. To access the parking lot, please enter The Huntington via the Allen Avenue gate.
All lectures start at 7:30 p.m., with light refreshments in advance.
For more information about the Carnegie Observatories or this lecture series, please call 626-304-0270 or e-mail phifer[at]ociw.edu.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GALAXIES  Daniel KelsonStaff Associate, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington With an age approaching 14 billion years, the universe is often thought of as static and unchanging. But it is in fact a tumultuous and dynamic sea on which billions of galaxies form, interact, evolve, and fade over time. They often travel in groups, occasionally in isolation, and sometimes within large and majestic clusters— the most massive objects known. Dr. Kelson will give a guided tour of the histories of galaxies as he analyzes data from the Hubble Space Telescope and travels to Carnegie’s telescopes in Chile, and he will take you all the way back to when the universe was only a fraction of its current age. |
THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF MASSIVE GALAXIES  Ivo LabbéCarnegie Fellow Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Because light takes time to travel from one place to another, we see extremely faraway galaxies not as they are now but as they were billions of years ago. Using advanced telescopes, we can directly study the childhood of galaxies like the Milky Way, and the results are baffling. Previous observations suggested that the early universe only contained young, small galaxies, as predicted by theory. Dr. Labbé will explain how we are now finding massive, mature galaxies that grew fast and stopped forming stars ("died") early. How were they initially overlooked? Are they really full-grown and dead? What's the role of the massive black holes at their centers? |
TRACING THE STORY OF THE MILKY WAY: A TOURIST'S GUIDE  Inese IvansCarnegie-Princeton Fellow Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington The most recent picture of early galaxy formation and evolution is one of turmoil and turbulence, with interactions, collisions and mergers ripping apart stellar populations, creating new star-forming regions, and leaving trails of stellar debris. Relics of these events are preserved in the kinematics and chemical abundance patterns of old stars. Dr. Ivans will discuss discoveries of new stellar systems in the outskirts of the Milky Way in the context of what we have learned about its history so far, and how we’ve learned it. |
THE ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM  John ChambersStaff Member Department of Terrestrial Magnestism Carnegie Institution of Washington Most of us at some point have wondered where the Earth and the other planets came from and why they look the way they do. Thanks to the painstaking efforts of thousands of scientists, we now have at least partial answers to these questions. Dr. Chambers will describe how the story of Earth’s origins has been pieced together using information returned by space missions, observations of young stars, analysis of meteorites, and computer simulations. He will also look ahead to future discoveries in planetary science. |
