SUNSET: 
Upcoming Astronomy Events
As a service to our community, Sky & Telescope lists astronomy-related events, including star parties, observatory public nights, astronomy talks, and more. Star parties offer dark skies and astronomical fellowship and often cater to families and feature special activities for kids. Public nights give the general public a chance to view the sky through large telescopes, and public talks are a great place to learn the fundamentals of the science and the craft.
You’ll also see online events offered here.
And if you’d like free copies of Sky & Telescope‘s Let’s Go Stargazing flyer or door prizes for your next star party, you can fill out this form.
AAVSO "Superstar Astronomers" with Dr. Adam Riess
May 28, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EDT
free for members
The Hubble constant remains one of the most important parameters in the cosmological model, setting the size and age scales of the Universe. Present uncertainties in the cosmological model, including the nature of dark energy, the properties of neutrinos, and the scale of departures from flat geometry, can be constrained by measurements of the Hubble constant made to higher precision than was possible with the first generations of Hubble Telescope instruments. A streamlined distance ladder constructed from infrared observations of Cepheids and type Ia supernovae with ruthless attention paid to systematics now provide 1.4% precision and offer the means to do much better. By steadily improving the precision and accuracy of the Hubble constant, we now see evidence for 5 sigma deviations from the standard model, referred to as LambdaCDM, and thus the exciting chance, if true, of discovering new fundamental physics such as exotic dark energy, a new relativistic particle, or a small curvature to name a few possibilities. In this Zoom webinar, Dr. Riess will review recent and expected progress, most recently based on measurements by the SH0ES Team from the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia EDR3.
Dr. Riess's observations of the accelerating expansion of the universe earned him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, the Thomas J. Barber Professor in Space Studies at Johns Hopkins with a joint appointment with the Space Telescope Science Institute. He is an observational cosmologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Riess is also a past winner of a MacArthur Grant, the Breakthrough Prize in Physics, the Einstein Medal, the Shaw Prize, and the Gruber Prize.
