DDO: Astronomy Speaker's Night - Mapping Our Milky Way Galaxy with Dr. Joshua Speagle (ONLINE)
Join us, from the comfort of your home! This program will feature live-stream views from the DDO's 74-Inch telescope (Weather permitting). Explore breaking news from space and current research into what lies beyond our home planet! Each night, we’ll take a virtual tour of the DDO, hear from our speakers about their own amazing space research, and ask them all our questions about what they know and what they’re discovering.
For as long as we have kept records, humans have argued about the nature of the lights in the night sky. We now know that many of these are stars inside our own galaxy — the Milky Way — as well as galaxies outside of our own. While we can directly observe what other galaxies look like, we still have only a rough picture of what our own galaxy looks like for one simple reason: we are currently stuck inside it! In this talk, Dr. Speagle will first describe some of the history behind the discovery of the Milky Way and discuss why it’s so difficult to piece together what our own Galaxy looks like. He will then talk about how modern surveys of stellar light are revolutionizing the field and the new pathways they have created to tackle these problems. He will then describe some of the ways his collaborators and he are taking advantage of these data, along with modern advances in computing, to map out the Galaxy both near and far. He will also present an interactive "stellar flow" map of more than 100 million stars!
Dr. Joshua Speagle obtained his B.A. in Astrophysics and Physics at Harvard University in 2015. After spending a year abroad at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo, he returned to Harvard where he obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Astronomy in 2020. He is currently a Banting & Dunlap Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on trying to understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way form, behave, and evolve by studying data from billions of stars within our own galaxy as well as data from billions of other galaxies.
Only one registration per household is required. The deadline to register for this program is Wednesday October 20, 2021 at 3:00pm. Prior to the start of the program you will be emailed information on the virtual program links and any specific information relating to your program.
Who can attend: Ages 10 and up
Fee: $12.50
Registration: ActiveRH
Organized by: RASC, Toronto Centre