2007 Podcasts

(September 10, 2007) Understanding the birth of planets has been a long-sought goal. It is the key to learning about Earth and the other types of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. What are Mauna Kea Observatories telling us about our cosmic origins? What amazing discoveries are being made with the most technologically advanced telescopes in the world? Dr. Michael Liu helps us to find the answers.

Science Standards: Describe the nature of our solar system; discuss current scientific views about our solar system; describe how technology is being used to conduct scientific investigations.

(August 16, 2007) Star and planet formation is happening today in a molecular cloud near you! By observing objects of different ages we can develop an understanding of how the process works. Dr. Hillenbrand, from the California Institute of Technology, will highlight her observations made at the Keck Observatory to help tell this tale.

Science Standards: Describe the nature of our solar system; discuss current scientific views about our solar system; describe how technology is being used to conduct scientific investigations.

(July 22, 2007) UCLA astronomer Dr. James Larkin talks about research using OSIRIS. OSIRIS is the newest instrument at Keck and is designed to dissect small patches of the sky in unprecedented detail. It has already been applied to study the moons of the Jovian planets, the black hole at the center of our Galaxy, some of the most distant galaxies and many objects in between. This talk will describe how the instrument works and then describe many of the discoveries from its first year of science.

Science Standards: Describe how information is gathered and analyzed about the universe by using technology.

(May 8, 2007) Dr. Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkely talks about how the giant planets in our Solar System are surrounded with ring systems, similar to the planetary disks around stars. Within these ring systems are narrow ringlets, broad dust sheets, wavy structures and small satellites. In the summer of 2007 Uranus’ rings appeared edge-on to observers on Earth, a marvelous opportunity to learn more about this system.

Science Standards: Earth in the Solar System (seasonal analogues to Uranus); Regular and Predictible Motion; Earth as one in a series of systems in the Solar System.

(March 13, 2007) Dr. Claire Max of the University of California at Santa Cruz helped pioneer the field of adaptive optics, a technology that compensates for the blurring of images by Earth’s atmosphere. As director of the Center for Adaptive Optics, Dr. Max helps develop and apply adaptive optics technology to large, ground-based telescopes. In this talk, Dr. Max explains how recent advancements in adaptive optics have increased our knowledge about active black holes and our own Solar System, particularly the planet Neptune and Saturn’s moon, Titan.

Science Standards: Electromagnetic Radiation; Energy, its Transformation and Matter; Forces of the Universe.