Have you ever looked up in the starry sky and felt small and insignificant compared to the vastness of the cosmos? What you will learn in this talk is that you are actually made of the exact same material as these sparky dots up there and essentially everything else in the universe. Stars produce the elements that compose everything you see – yourselves included – while they are born, live and die in the cosmic ocean. You are literally a living part of the universe, made out of stardust!

Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn will be discussing how to prepare and plan for a night of imaging with special consideration to location, time, weather and sky quality considerations. She will also be discussing how to interpret weather forecasts and use various websites, apps and desktop software in order to optimize your night out under the stars. Her talk will also be applicable to those who aren’t interesting in photography.

The Welsh Lectures in Physics have been held annually since 1975 in honour of H.L. Welsh, a distinguished former faculty member in the Physics Department. They are the major public event in the life of the Department of Physics and are intended to celebrate discoveries in physics and their broader impact.   They are intended to be broadly accessible to an audience drawn from across the university, other academic institutions and the interested public. The Welsh Lecturers for 2014 are:

A science-based variety show aimed at blending knowledge, music and comedy

Solar System Social is a space-themed speaker series that brings exciting ideas and research from the field of planetary science to the general public in the form of short, informative, and interesting talks that last about 20 minutes each.

What is the sound of a twinkling star? Can planets keep a beat? How loud was the big bang?

Dr. Laura Parker will give an overview of the techniques used to map the universe on the largest scales, which have enabled us to measure dark energy and dark matter.

With Alanna Mitchell, acclaimed science journalist, author and contributor to CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks.

Magnetars are some of the most extreme objects in the known universe. Though small in size, they possess the strongest magnetic fields in the universe and are the densest objects known. In this talk, we’ll go over the incredible behaviour seen in these rare objects — from tiny explosions to outshining the rest of the X-ray sky combined.

This is the 15th Annual Symposium organized by ASX and this year's theme is: "Into the Unknown: The Future of Space Exploration"