Event |
| |
Wed April 8 Los Altos Hills CA FREE
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series Presents
New Worlds: Analyzing the Atmospheres of Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Featuring Prof. Jonathan Fortney (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Time: 7 PM (PST)
Location: Smithwick Theater, Foothill College, Los Altos
Free Admission
Over 6000 planets have now been found around other stars, but we only have information about what their atmospheres are like for a few dozen. NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which features a 20-foot mirror in space, is currently being used to understand atmospheres. We can look for atmospheres around rocky planets the size of the Earth, and we can measure the abundances of molecules like water, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide, in larger planets, of sizes similar to Neptune and Jupiter. In this talk, Professor Fortney will describe the latest exoplanet results from JWST as we seek to understand these new worlds.
Jonathan Fortney is the Department Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a planetary astrophysicist who works to understand what planets and their atmospheres are made of, both for exoplanets around other stars and for solar system planets. He has been a member of the science teams for NASA space missions like the Cassini Mission to Saturn and the Kepler Mission, which found over 3000 exoplanets.
Don’t miss this stellar opportunity to expand your knowledge of the cosmos!
The lecture is co-sponsored by:
• Foothill College Science, Tech, Engineering & Math Division
• The SETI Institute
• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Foothill College is located off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos.
• Closest parking: Lot 1 (stairs access to the theater)
• Alternative parking: Lot 5 (same elevation as theater)
• Campus Map: https://foothill.edu/map/
• Parking Info: https://foothill.edu/parking/
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
Https://SETI.org |
|