Next Meeting

When May 21st, 2008 at 7:30pm. Come early at 7pm to visit with your fellow members. Bring your slides to show after the program. Questions? Contact the VP Programs Where Physics-Astronomy Building Room A102 University of Washington Seattle Map What Searching for Life Beyond Our Solar System Prof. Victoria Meadows Department of Astronomy, University of Washington In the vast blackness of space, our home planet is a single sparkling oasis of life. Whether the Universe harbors other worlds that can support even simple life is a question that has been pondered, yet remained unanswered, for over two thousand years. Over the next two decades, NASA will launch a series of spaceborne telescopes that will search for Earth-sized planets around other stars, and examine those planets for signs of life. But which observations should we make? And what should we look for? In this talk, Prof. Victoria Meadows will explain how we will search for and identify planets that might support life around other stars, and describe results from the new science of astrobiology that will help us recognize signs of life on these distant worlds. Many thanks to our past speakers of 2008: Denis Janky. On April 16th, 2008, Denis Janky, a fellow SAS member, shared with the audience observing tips, favorite galaxies for telescopes large and small, and other resources. Dr. Chris Brook. On March 19th, 2008, Dr. Chris Brook of University of Washington spoke on the cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Paul Rodman. On February 22nd, 2008, Paul Rodman gave a very entertaining and extremely informative talk on planning and logging astronomical observations, which also included a demonstration using the software AstroPlanner. Previous Speakers A list of speakers at previous meetings can be found here.