“You can almost touch the stars”
Webiner presenter : Tom Field
Even if you wanted to touch a star, they’re impossibly distant. But despite these great distances, researchers have learned a great deal about quite a few stars. How? The most common method to study the stars is called spectroscopy, which is the art and science of analyzing the colorful rainbow spectrum produced by a prism-like device.
Until recently, spectroscopy was too expensive and too complicated for all but a handful of amateurs. Today, though, new tools make spectroscopy accessible to almost all of us. You no longer need a PhD, dark skies, long exposures, enormous aperture … or a big budget! With your current telescope and FITS camera (or a simple web cam or even a DSLR without a telescope) you can now easily study the stars yourself. Wouldn’t you like to detect the atmosphere on Neptune or the red shift of a quasar right from your own backyard?!
This Webinar presentation on April 23 with lots of interesting examples, will demonstrate how spectroscopy is used in research and show you how to get started. See you at 7:30PM at SciWorks.