Astronomy at Home Seattle: February 11th (Online)

AoTSeattle and UW DiRAC present: Astronomy at Home! This free series of livestreamed public events will feature accessible, engaging science presentations on topics ranging from planets to black holes to the beginning of the Universe.

IN THIS INSTALLMENT OF ASTRONOMY AT HOME: (from Dr. Ian Sullivan) Groundbreaking new telescopes such as the Vera Rubin Observatory will push our understanding of our solar system and the universe. As we build bigger telescopes with larger mirrors we are able to see fainter objects and create higher resolution images of the night sky, but to extract science from the data we must first solve new challenges. Among those challenges is refraction from our own atmosphere: much as a straw appears to bend when you put it in a water glass, the light from distant stars appears to bend as it passes through the atmosphere to our telescopes. We have long known how to fix this “bending”, but we now must deal with slight differences in that refraction for redder and bluer light, an effect called Differential Chromatic Refraction, or DCR. I will describe the new technique we have developed to correct for DCR, and how we are able to use it to turn black and white images into color.

The event will begin at 7pm and there will be lots of time to ask questions afterwards. We’ll be going live on Zoom and Youtube at 7pm PST! Then join us at 8pm on our Instagram for an Instagram Live Q&A with Dr. Sullivan!

YouTube
Zoom

Instagram: @aotseattle
Talk Series