A free public lecture will be held at 7 p.m. on Friday, 12 April at the Koury Auditorium at GTCC’s Jamestown campus.
Please note that the location for this talk is NOT the same auditorium as was used for TriStar. Koury is Building 19 on the campus map at http://www.gtcc.edu/media/10954/jamestowncampusmap.pdf. TriStar was in Building 25.
The Life and Death of Stars
Dr. Stacy Palen, Weber State University
Friday, 12 April 2013, 7:00 p.m., Koury Auditorium, GTCC
About the Talk: Stars are born, live and die, but on much longer time scales than people! Dr. Palen will walk the audience through the lives of stars, from their birth from clouds of dust and gas to their deaths as planetary nebulae or supernovae, to their final resting state as corpses: white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. Along the way, she will explain not only what we know, but also how we know it. This talk is appropriate for all ages, and all levels of prior astronomy knowledge.
About the Speaker: Stacy Palen has dedicated her life to astronomy and astronomy education. From research on dying sun-like stars to figuring out novel ways to help people learn to understand the Universe, she has been focused on learning more about how we understand the Universe. This quest has taken her beyond the lab and the classroom: she has created planetarium shows that are distributed around the world, written four introductory textbooks, and given public talks in venues ranging from universities to Yellowstone National Park (where her talk was briefly interrupted by a herd of elk). She also seeks to expand her understanding of teaching and learning on her small farm, where she teaches children, adults, horses, goats and dogs how to all (mostly) work together.
This event is sponsored by The Stellar Society, GTCC’s Student Astronomy Club, and the Cline Observatory through the GTCC Foundation, with special assistance this year from W.W. Norton & Company Publishing. It is part of a statewide calendar of science-related public events scheduled for April 2013 – the NC Science Festival. Cline Observatory will be open after the lecture, weather permitting.