May is here and Friday, May 23 at Jack Fields Elementary School is when and where you want to be! Not only will we have our usual top-notch astronomy presentations, but there will also be Subway sandwiches, chips, water and soft drinks for those in attendance! Please feel free to bring a dessert to share.
At 6:30, Justin McCollum will present Methods of Hopping Across the Night Sky!
At 7:30, Sean Terry will be talking about gravitational microlensing and some the work he has done using this technique.
Presentation overview:
Since the early 2000’s gravitational microlensing has been used to discover and characterize exotic objects in our galaxy, including icy exoplanets, free-floating planets, and isolated black holes. In this presentation, Sean will give an overview of the microlensing technique and his recent work to follow-up one planetary system that appears to have the highest velocity ever measured. This nearly hyper-velocity system (540 km/s) is just below the escape velocity for stars within the galactic center region. He will conclude with a discussion of the implications for high-velocity exoplanet systems, and the promise of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope microlensing mission to discover more systems like this. – Dr. Sean Terry bio
Good stuff.
Come hungry and… see you there!
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 825 9620 6853
Passcode: 058623