Free Public Lectures Online
Each event features a noted scientist who discusses a different cosmic topic. These lectures will be presented with a livestream to YouTube, and questions can be asked in the YouTube chat. The recordings will also be posted on our YouTube channel and accessible from this page.
Lectures are typically held at 8 PM EDT (UTC -4) during Daylight Time and 8 PM EST (UTC -5) during Standard Time, unless otherwise noted.
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Past Lectures
Listing Results
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Understanding the Formation and Evolution of Galaxies
June 7, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Cameron Hummels (Caltech) Galaxies—like our own Milky Way—are among the basic building blocks of our universe. Discovered only one hundred years ago, galaxies are complex systems...
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Eta Carinae and the Homunculus Nebula in 3D
May 3, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Frank Summers (Space Telescope Science Institute) Eta Carinae is the closest, best known, and most studied of the stars known as "supernova impostors". After surviving a supernova-like...
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Neutrino Astronomy: A New Window into the Extreme Universe
April 5, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Marcos Santander (University of Alabama) Located under a mile of glacial ice near the South Pole is IceCube, the largest neutrino telescope in the world. IceCube detects high-energy neutrinos,...
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Hubble from Space and Integral-field Spectroscopy from the Ground: Seeing Both the Forests and the Trees
March 1, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Marc Sarzi (Armagh Observatory & Planetarium) Integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) has driven tremendous progress in many areas of astronomy in the past two decades. Using a combination...
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To Catch A Dancing Star: The Story of "Extreme Precision" Spectroscopy
February 1, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Arpita Roy (Space Telescope Science Institute) It has been three decades since astronomers first discovered planets outside our solar system. This profound scientific moment established the field...
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The Vibrant Life in Cities of Galaxies
January 4, 2022 LecturesSpeaker: Mireia Montes (Space Telescope Science Institute) A galaxy cluster is a collection of hundreds to thousands of galaxies—a "city" of galaxies. Similar to our human...
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The Webb Space Telescope: Launching a Legacy
December 7, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Alexandra Lockwood (Space Telescope Science Institute) Originally envisioned in the late-1980s, NASA's next flagship observatory, the Webb Space Telescope, is now reaching fruition....
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4000 Years of Women in Science
November 2, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Dr. Sethanne Howard (Washington Academy of Sciences) For more than 4,000 years of written knowledge, women have participated in the great human adventure of science. Female creativity and...
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How Dark Is Space?
October 5, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Dr. Tod Lauer (NSF's NOIRLab) Looking at the sky on a clear moonless night, one sees stars against black space. Powerful telescopes reveal faint stars and galaxies strewn between the...
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Astronomy vs Astrology: What's the Difference, Really?
September 7, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Nicole Arulanantham (Space Telescope Science Institute) It is inevitable in every astronomer's career that sometime, someplace, someone will refer to them as an astrologer. Although the scientist...
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The Importance of Small Objects: Exocomets
August 3, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Isabel Rebollido (Space Telescope Science Institute) Comets, asteroids, and other minor bodies in the solar system are thought to have played an important role in the formation of planets....
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Armchair Astrophysics, Volume 2
July 6, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Quyen Hart (Space Telescope Science Institute) Pull up a chair, get comfortable, and look all around you. Can you spot some familiar objects or common phenomena that can be connected to a topic...
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How to Hunt for Distant Worlds
June 1, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Dr. Emily Rickman (European Space Agency/Space Telescope Science Institute) Since the discovery of the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, more than 4,000 exoplanets have...
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Finding the Music of the Spheres: Hearing Stars
May 4, 2021 LecturesFeaturing The Consonance Collective and the Bergamot Quartet (Peabody Institute). Presenting “Hearing Stars,” a visual album of string quartets depicting the life cycles of stars produced...
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Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond
April 6, 2021 LecturesSpeaker: Christopher Wanjek More than 50 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, why is there so little human presence in space? Will we ever reach Mars? What will it take to become a multi-planet species,...