September 27: Voyager's Venture

The Voyager satellites are currently the furthest man-made objects from Earth.  Launched in 1977, these satellites are now at the edge of our solar system.  In his lecture, PhD student David Hendel took the audience through the story of this highly successful mission, from the initial design of the satellites to their current status past Pluto.  Taking advantage of a unique planetary alignment, David explained how the NASA scientists were able to set the instruments on a Grand Tour, flying by all of the planets on their way out of the solar system.  This tour has produced some of the highest quality images of the planets to date.

After the lecture, bad weather prevented observing.  Yet those who stayed were able to enjoy roof tours, to view our 3D wall or to listen to a description of the moons of our solar system and their naming history.  

-- Lauren Corlies (graduate student)

September 13: Fossils of Formation

On Friday, September 13th, we launched our 2013 Fall Public Lecture & Stargazing series with a talk on the Milky Way. Post-doctoral researcher, Allyson Sheffield, presented what we currently know about the formation of our galaxy. It turns out that galaxies formed in a hierarchical manner after the Big Bang, with small clumps of gas and dust forming stars, then clusters of stars, and eventually protogalaxies and galaxies. In essence, all galaxies form by accreting other galaxies in a process called galactic cannibalism. Allyson's work deals with observing tidal streams surrounding our galaxy and tracing them back in time and space to determine what structures they originally came from. She is currently focusing her efforts on the Triangulum-Andromeda over-density.

After the lecture, many visitors headed to the roof for some clear sky observing of the Moon, Mizar and Alcor, Alberio, and the Ring Nebula while others remained in the lecture hall to hear about the recent news of the Voyager 1 probe entering interstellar space.

Friday's volunteers included graduate students Jinjing Chen in the lecture hall, Adrian Price-Whelen, Susan Clark, Steven Mohammed, Doug Thornhill, and Yuan Li on the roof, and undergraduates Gladys Velez-Caicedo and Varad Srinivasan on the 3D Wall.

Join us for our next event on Friday, Sept. 27th to hear more on Voyager 1!

--Summer Ash, Director of Outreach

June 14: Cowboys & Aliens

Last Friday, June 14, we screened the joint Western+SciFi action film "Cowboys & Aliens" for an audience of enthusiastic movie-goers. We started the night with a short film, "The Shot", a 5-minute piece about a magical camera lens that works as a teleportation device. The short portrays a man who finds and then uses the lens to travel the world, but trouble arises when he accidentally takes a photo that has him travel out of this world!

The feature, "Cowboys & Aliens", is a genre-mashup that asks "how would a pre-1900, small western town handle an alien invasion?" The answer is: Daniel Craig, the film's leading actor. The film combines references to classic western films like "A Fistful of Dollars" alongside clear homage to sci-fi movies such as "Alien" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (up next in our summer film series). Though there is not much science to discuss in the movie, we did estimate that the height of the alien rocket is about ~3 times the size of a Saturn V at about ~10 times the width. One wonders how the aliens use gold as a power source for such a large vessel...

Join us next time on July 12th for our next Summer Film & Stargazing Event!

--Adrian Price-Whelen (graduate student)

May 3: Why Dark Matter Matters

On Friday night, Kerstin Perez, a post-doc here at Columbia, told us that we can only see about 20% of the mass in the universe. The matter in the universe is mostly stuff that we can't see. The way that stars move in galaxies tells us that there's a lot more mass in those structures than we thought. But this extra mass doesn't emit light or interact with magnetic fields - we only see its gravitational effect. Because the matter doesn't emit or absorb light, astronomers have named it 'dark matter'. The current theory posits that dark matter is a fundamental particle that rarely interacts with normal matter, and then only via the weak nuclear force.

Kerstin also told us about the different ways scientists are looking for dark matter particles, including her own research. She built an instrument that flew on a balloon over Antarctica and attempted to detect the particles that form when two dark matter particles run into each other and annihilate. Other astrophysicists at Columbia are involved in a part of the ATLAS project at CERN that could detect dark matter particles from high energy collisions that simulate the early universe. Still others work at big underground detectors where they try to detect dark matter particles passing through Earth.

After Kerstin's talk, most of our audience members headed up to the roof of Pupin where Saturn and Arcturus were on display through our telescopes. The sky was clear and people were especially excited to check out Saturn's rings. A few folks chose to delay their observing to listen to a short presentation on the Herschel Space Observatory, the European Space Agency's infrared telescope which ran out of coolant last week and is no longer in operation. Others watched films about the universe on our 3D wall. 

--Steph Douglas (graduate student)

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel

April 19: Extragalactic FM

On Friday, April 19th, Ph.D. candidate Destry Saul shared with us the wonders of the Universe as seen  in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. He introduced the audience to some of his favorite radio images taken with his favorite radio telescopes. Radio telescopes can either be single dish (like Arecibo or Parkes) or arrays (like the VLA or the VLBA). Objects that emit in the radio include galaxies, supernova remnants, and pulsars. Destry's favorite objects include the closest and most powerful radio source, Cygnus A, and the brightest radio supernova remnant, Casseopeia A.

Unfortunately, the skies were quite cloudy, so observing was replaced by tours of our rooftop observatory given by graduate students Adrian Price-Whelan and Steph Douglas. Audience members were also treated to a guided viewing of our 3D Wall by undergraduate Gladys Velez-Caicedo, and a discussion of the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum, X-ray astronomy, by graduate student Yuan Li.

We hope to see you at our next event on May 3rd.

--Summer Ash (Director of Outreach)

April 5: Eyes in the Sky

On a beautifully clear (almost) spring night, PhD student Ximena Fernandez gave a talk entitled "Eyes in the Sky" to a packed room of over 200 people. Ximena's talk focused on how the combination of space telescopes that operate at a variety of wavelengths have been invaluable in revealing the secrets of our Universe. Starting with our galactic center, she showed how only through the use of infrared and X-ray data have we begun to understand the nature of our galaxy's supermassive black hole. Moving to nearby galaxies, GALEX images revealed the largest known spiral galaxy, which has extended spiral arms thanks to an ongoing interaction with another galaxy. At the end, Ximena presented the newly released Hubble Extreme Deep Field, the single longest exposure in all of astronomy. The image contains over 5 billion galaxies, including the oldest known galaxy to date. The talk ended with a video that zoomed through the image to show the distribution of the galaxies in the picture. You can watch the video here!

After seeing so many wonderful images, the good weather gave everyone the opportunity to see amazing objects with their own eyes.  Most popular were the Orion Nebula and Jupiter.  Some chose to remain in the lecture hall where there was a presentation on the Cosmic Microwave Background and the new results just released by the Planck Telescope.  Finally, there was also the possibility of experiencing our 3D wall. Everyone had a great time and we're looking forward to our next event.

--Lauren Corlies (graduate student)

March 21-23: Stargazing with BAM

In partnership with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Columbia Astronomy Public Outreach put on a trio of stargazing sessions in Brooklyn over spring break. These "star parties" were a complement to another event at BAM on those same nights entitled Planetarium - a musical collaboration between Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Sufjan Stevens. The three musicians produced an collection of songs by the same name inspired by the Solar System. 

We transported four telescopes (three Dobsonians, and a Celestron) from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn and set them up on the roof of the new Fisher Building. Even though it was quite cold and windy, the skies were extremely cooperative, allowing for a full hour of observing on all three nights. Our celestial targets included the Moon, Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, and the Mizar-Alcor star system. 

Huge thanks to BAM for reaching out to us and to all who attended. Special thanks to all our volunteers - undergraduate: Doug Thornhill; graduate students: Lia Corrales, Ximena Fernandez, Erika Hamden, David Hendel, Duane Lee, Jenna Lemonais, Steven Mohammed, Dan D'Orazio, Adrian Price-Whelan, and Munier Salem; and post-docs: Josh Peek and Matt Turk. 

--Summer Ash (Director of Outreach)

(Photo credit: Ed Lefkowicz)