Observatory Traveling Presentations

For thousands of years, western culture considered the Earth to be at the center of the universe. Recognition that Earth could be moving appeared early in the ancient Mediterranean region, but resistance to the idea took many forms—some scientific, some cultural. Starting with how the sky moves, we'll collect clues about the nature of the Earth, Moon, Sun, stars and planets. We'll see how social context affects whether clues are allowed to be used, who decides what the world as we know it is (and how), and we'll meet some historical figures on the way.

In the early 1900s, astronomers thought the Earth and Sun were made of the same materials and helium was something that only existed in stars. We'll follow the lives of three women who changed the way we saw the universe (Annie Jump Cannon, Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin, and Lise Meitner), joining their journey to discover what powers our Sun, what it’s made of, and the remarkable secret rainbows of the stars in our sky hold about the nature and origin of the universe. 

In 1938 a fictional invasion by the inhabitants of Mars panicked many Americans. Today we are invading Mars with our robots. Mars has become a world of robots that poke and prod the land, photograph the surface and probe with ever more advanced instruments in order to discover if there ever were Martians, if so are they still there, and of course, will we ever inhabit this distant world?

Discovered by a young American in 1930, questions about what to call this world were raised at the start of the 21st century. Why do some people consider Pluto not a planet? Why do others insist it is? This talk delves into how we call things in nature by proper names, how we agree on what those names mean, and finishes with the ongoing stunning discoveries on this tiny world at the edge of the known solar system.

The gorgeous space pictures which frequent our dashboards today are far more than aesthetically beautiful—they're gateways to understanding aspects of the universe most of us wouldn't even dream were possible from a simple study of color and brightness. We'll discover how light reveals all sorts of information about objects we cannot touch while enjoying a lovely array of astronomical images.

The ideas and discoveries of four people in the 1920s paved the way for our modern model of the universe. Starting with the idea of the stable, static universe that prevailed in the early 1900s, we will join Georges Lemaitre, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, and Milton Humason on their journey toward understanding the incredible distances between galaxies and how our universe began.

The search for life has been a major driving force behind NASA’s exploration of the Solar System.   What are the most basic conditions life needs in order to exist? What worlds in the Solar System meet those requirements? We'll explore our current understanding of those worlds and touch on exoplanets outside our Solar System. Spoiler: There are more of them than you probably think.

In 1969 men from Earth walked on the surface of our next nearest neighbor, the Moon.  The journey began as a competition between two superpowers but became something greater, if only for a short time.  This talk parallels the reasoning behind the space race with the technical accomplishments and human achievements that occurred at the same time.

The wonders of modern day astronomy have been made known by the humblest of substances on Earth—by an understanding of nature right here, on our own planet, and by a method so simple it almost seems like magic. We'll learn how digital cameras "see" and "speak" to computers. We'll do this without any engineering jargon, and with only a teeny bit of information about atoms.