UofT AstroTour: Seeing Beyond Red with Cool Technology
Speaker: Dr. Suresh Sivanandam
Humans often don’t realize that they can sense more than visible light. They feel infrared radiation as heat, which is also another form of light. Over the past few decades, there has been an explosion of technological innovation in the detection of infrared light. This has opened up huge discovery spaces in astronomy. It has enabled us to see the effects of our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, and take pictures of planets in nearby star systems. Stardust in galaxies also lights up in the infrared, allowing us to track the evolution of galaxies from very early times. The technology required to detect infrared light is quite unique and presents difficult engineering challenges. Dr. Sivanandam will present an overview of the great new discoveries in infrared astronomy and the associated technological breakthroughs that have ushered in this new and exciting era of astronomy.
About the Speaker
Suresh Sivanandam is a Dunlap Fellow at the Dunlap Institute. He constructs novel infrared instrumentation for studying how galaxies in our Universe evolve. Currently, he is involved in building an infrared imaging spectrograph called WIFIS that will be heading to Kitt Peak, Arizona next Spring.
Location
University of Toronto - St. George Campus
Lash Miller Chemistry Laboratories, Room LM161
80 St. George Street
Toronto
http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/astrotours/?page_id=392
The U of T Astronomy Public Tour, or AstroTour, is a monthly event operated by the graduate students of the U of T Astronomy Department. The Tour features a public lecture by a member of the Department on topics ranging from their research to great moments in astronomical history. Following the lecture, tour-goers can peer at the night sky through the Department’s balcony and dome telescopes, or watch a planetarium show run live by astronomer. Admission to the tour is free. Seating for the lecture is on a first-come, first-served basis (doors open ten minutes before the start of the lecture), and the telescope observing is walk-in.
Registration for this AstroTour’s planetarium shows will begin at Noon on Thursday November 27th using the following link:
http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/astrotours/?page_id=644