Speaker's Night and Annual Meeting: Illuminating the dark universe with things that go bang in the night

Strap yourselves in, because the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is going to change optical astronomy forever. Dr. Renée Hložek will describe how we are going to use this impressive telescope currently under construction in the deserts of Chile to illuminate some of the most pressing questions of our time: how and why the universe appears to be accelerating.

Renée Hložek is Assistant Professor at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UofT. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa where she completed her undergraduate degree. She completed her DPhil at Oxford University in 2011 as a South African Rhodes Scholar. After four years as the Lyman Spitzer Fellow at Princeton University, she moved to Toronto in 2016. She was recently named a 2019 CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, and is a TED Senior Fellow. She uses data from telescopes around the world to understand how the universe started, what it is made of, and how it changes with time. When she isn't studying what makes the universe tick, she loves reading, singing and making good cocktails.

Talk starts at 7:30pm, socializing at 7:00pm.

Following the talk we will convene our Annual Meeting.

Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Registration: Not required
Organized by: RASC, Toronto Centre
Location: Ontario Science Centre (follow the signs to the RASC meeting)