Free Public Lecture on Brown Dwarfs and Free-floating Planets April 17, 2013

Prof. Gibor Basri (of the University of California, Berkeley) will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:

Brown Dwarfs and Free-floating Planets: When You’re Just too Small to be a Star

in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College in Los Altos Hills; part of the ongoing Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series.

The least massive star is six times heavier than the most massive known planet. In between is the realm of the mysterious brown dwarfs. The first of these was discovered only in 1995, the same year astronomers found the first planet beyond our solar system. Since then we have found hundreds of each, and new techniques are giving us even more power to probe the properties of these enigmatic bodies. Dr. Basri will summarize the progress we have made in understanding the domain of cosmic objects that don’t qualify as stars.
Gibor Basri has been a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley for more than 30 years, teaching not just astronomy but also a course on the science in science fiction. He is known as one of the discoverers of brown dwarfs, and an expert on low-mass stars. In addition, he is a member of the Kepler mission team which is searching for earth-sized planets around other stars. Prof. Basri has used telescopes ranging from mighty Keck telescopes in Hawaii to space-borne telescopes like Hubble and Kepler. He has long made promotion of science in underrepresented communities a mission, and is now the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at Berkeley.

Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos. For directions and parking information, see: http://www.foothill.edu/news/transportation.php
For a campus map, see: http://www.foothill.edu/news/maps.php

The lecture is co-sponsored by:
* NASA Ames Research Center
* The Foothill College Astronomy Program
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

We expect large crowds, so please arrive a little bit early to find parking. Having exact change or bills for the $3 parking fee helps speed up the line.

A number of past Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are now available free on YouTube at the series' own channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/SVAstronomyLectures/

Official Website: http://www.foothill.edu/ast