SMCAS

SEPT 3rd SPEAKER:  To Be Announced

TIME:                          7:30pm  September 3rd
WHERE:                     The CSM Planetarium  Free and open to the public   

 OCT 1st  SPEAKER:  Dr. Steve Stahler 

                                              Research Astronomer, UC Berkeley

TOPIC:                       Star Formation: A Star is Born

TIME:                         7:30pm  October 1st
WHERE:                    The CSM Planetarium  Free and open to the public  

 On a clear night, away from city lights, the sky glows with thousands of stars. The number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone is one hundred billion, and there are countless galaxies like it. Starbirth is happening all around us, all the time. Somehow, Nature finds it extraordinarily easy to make these objects.

But how, exactly, are stars born? How did this process forge our present-day Universe, and how will it shape our destiny? Within the last few decades, astronomers have unraveled many of the key elements in this cosmic mystery. We now understand how star formation underlies not only the creation of galaxies, but also how it leads, as a byproduct, to orbiting planets like the Earth. Despite such basic advances, deep questions remain in this active field of research.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Steven Stahler is an astrophysicist at U. C. Berkeley. Raised in Maryland, he attended graduate school at Berkeley in physics. He was a professor at MIT before returning to the Bay Area in 1992. His research centers on the grand problem of star formation, and he coauthored the first textbook in this field. Steve is an accomplished artist, and especially delights in the deep esthetic appeal of his subject. This is an aspect he tries to convey in his numerous public appearances.