Free Public Lecture on Finding the Next Earth: The Kepler Mission October 17, 2012

Dr. Natalie Batalha, Mission Scientist for NASA's Kepler Project, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:
Finding the Next Earth: The Latest Results from Kepler.

as part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College, El Monte Road and Freeway 280, in Los Altos Hills, California 94022. Parking on campus costs $3. Call the series hot-line at 650-949-7888 for more information and driving directions.

With the launch of NASA's Kepler spacecraft in 2009, humanity's quest to find planets orbiting other stars took a great leap forward. Dr. Batalha will describe the techniques used by the Kepler team to identify Earth-size planets and update us on the remarkable progress they are making. She will discuss the planets already found (including one like Tatooine in Star Wars, with two suns in the sky), and share what we know so far about the thousands of candidate planets that are in the Kepler data (planets ranging from one-half the size of Earth to twice the size of Jupiter.)

Dr. Natalie Batalha is a research astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and the Mission Scientist for Kepler. She holds a doctorate in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Batalha started her career studying young, sun-like stars. Inspired by the growing number of exoplanet discoveries, she joined the team at Ames working on the emerging technology for finding planets by measuring the tiny decrease in light when a planet moves across the face of its sun. Twelve years later, she stands poised with the Kepler team to make discoveries that, until recently, have been in the realm of science fiction, but are now becoming our scientific reality.

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.

Past Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are now available in MP3 format at:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html

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