Early Morning Eclipse 3/3; Pictures of Distant Worlds Lecture 3/11:
1. Total Eclipse of the Moon
Just a heads up (if you'll excuse the expression from an astronomer).
A total eclipse of the Moon will be visible to everyone in North America early in the morning of March 3, 2026. The good news is that total eclipses of the Moon are very democratic – easy to spot, perfectly safe to look at, and not requiring any special equipment to see. The unfortunate thing is that all the time zones will see the eclipse in the “middle of the night” – which might lead to some very tired co-workers or science students coming in the next morning.
My full information sheet, with the key times of the eclipse for each time zone, can be found at: https://bit.ly/2026eclipse
The next total eclipse of the Moon visible from the U.S. and Canada won't be until 2029!
2. Free Public Lecture
On Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at 7 pm (PST), Dr. Bruce Macintosh (Director of the University of California Observatories) will give a free, illustrated, non-technical lecture entitled:
"Pictures of Distant Worlds"
in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos (see directions below)
The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, now in its 26th year. (NOTE: The talk is rescheduled from January, when the speaker had to be away.)
In the past three decades, more than 6000 planets have been discovered orbiting other stars beyond our own Solar System. However, we still don’t know if our Solar System is rare or unique — the powerful techniques that detect extrasolar planets have discovered systems very different than our own. In recent years, advances in technology have allowed a handful of giant planets around other stars to be imaged directly. Find out about the first-ever images of other solar systems — and the technology that has allowed us to discover them, such as the Gemini Planet Imager — as well as the future planet-hunting space telescopes. The ultimate goal is detection of a second ‘pale blue dot’ — an Earth twin where we could even see the biosignatures of extrasolar life.
Bruce Macintosh is the Director of the University of California Observatories in California and Hawaii. His research focuses on the study of extrasolar planets, in particular the study of such planets through direct imaging. Direct imaging of extrasolar planets involves blocking, suppressing, and subtracting the light of the bright parent star so that a planet hundreds of thousands of times fainter can be seen and studied in detail. Dr. Macintosh co-led the team that imaged the first extrasolar planets, and was the Principal Investigator of the Gemini Planet Imager, an advanced adaptive optics planet-finder for the Gemini South telescope.
Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos.
For directions and parking information, see: https://foothill.edu/parking/
For a campus map, to find the Smithwick Theater (Bldg. 1000), see:
https://foothill.edu/map/
Note: Parking lot 1 is closest, with access to the theater by stairs. Parking lot 5 provides access from the same elevation as the theater..
The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* The Foothill College Science, Tech, Engineering & Math Division
* The SETI Institute and
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Past lectures in the series can also be found on YouTube at: http://youtube.com/svastronomylectures
and as audio podcasts at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1805595
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