Saturday, March 26, 2011

March 25, 2011: Ancient East Asian Astronomy

This past Friday we had an excellent lecture on ancient east Asian astronomy given by graduate student Joo Heon Yoon. The talk focused on ancient astronomical techniques from Joo's homeland of Korea. Joo described how modern astronomers and historians can use observations made by ancient astronomers to constrain both scientific models and historical theories.

Hazy weather obscured the view for most of the night, but our roof volunteers persevered and gave visitors views of M44, the Orion nebula and Sirius. Our roof volunteers Neil Zimmerman, Richard Darst, Bryan Terrazas, Dan D'Orazio and Ian Allen did a great job. Graduate student Yuan Li also showed visitors 3d visualizations astronomical topics spanning the universe from the solar system to the formation of large scale structure. A few people stuck around in the lecture hall for slide shows on star clusters and exoplanet detection led by Christine Simpson.

Thanks to all our volunteers and to the 120 people who came to our
event.

Christine

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