Directly Imaging Extrasolar Planets - Cancelled

This meeting has been cancelled due to weather.

As a consolation, you can go to Sky & Telescope for this interview with Dr. Currie and Dr. Carol Grady on the subject. Thanks to RASC Mississauga for linking to it.

A talk by Thayne Currie (University of Toronto)

Direct imaging is the new frontier in exoplanet detection and the means by which we will eventually discover a true Earth twin around a Sun-like star. In this talk, I introduce the instrumentation, observing techniques, and image processing methods used to directly image planets. I will describe in detail several imaged exoplanetary systems which have surprising properties, in particular their atmospheres/sources of emission.

The next 5-10 years will see an explosion of new discoveries in this field due to the commissioning of ground-based extreme adaptive optics imagers capable of revealing young Jupiter/Saturn planets and (perhaps) molten super-Earths almost ten million times fainter than the host stars at small angular separations. I will close by discussing one such project with which I am involved: the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) project.

Talks start at 7:30 socializing starts at 7:00.

Who can attend: everyone including non-members
Fee: free
Reservation not needed 
Location: Ontario Science Centre