Professor Shri Kulkarni Director of the Caltech Optical Observatories will present a lecture entitled "The Restless Universe and the Palomar Transient Factory”
7:30pm Friday February 27 Bigelow Physics Building
Cosmic explosions were first noted nearly two thousand years ago Together, supernovae and variable stars have contributed richly to key problems in modern astrophysics: distances to galaxies, cosmography and the build up of elements in the Universe.
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), an innovative 2-telescope system, was designed to explicitly to chart the transient sky with a particular focus on events which lie in the nova-supernova gap. The PTF is now finding an extragalactic transient every 20 minutes and a Galactic (strong) variable every 10 minutes. The results so far: ultra-luminous supernovae as the end of the most massive stars in the Universe, progress in understanding the origin of Ia supernovae (which were used by astronomers to discover dark energy), and the identification of curious events of value to future gravitational wave observatories in space.
Admission is free. This talk is intended for a general audience including enthusiasts of all backgrounds and ages.
best regards George Rhee
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