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Free and open to the public but per our host’s policy, minors (under 18) are welcome to attend as long as they are accompanied by their parent or guardian at all times.

This meeting’s speaker will present inperson.

The Big Eye: Palomar Observatory’s past and future

Palomar Observatory is just two hours from Orange County. Home to the 200-inch Hale telescope—once the world’s largest telescope—and an array of smaller facilities, it is one of the most productive astronomical research sites in the US. This talk will give an overview of Palomar’s development and rich history, and will discuss how creative ideas and evolving instrumentation help to keep the Observatory at the forefront of astronomical discovery as it nears its 100th birthday.

Geoffrey Mo is a Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories and at Caltech. His main research interests are in the birth, evolution, and death of binary stars, particularly those involving white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. He uses large telescopes on the ground and in space to study these systems, which are responsible for many of the most energetic events in the universe. He is also interested in new astronomical instrumentation and is leading the development of a new high-speed imager for the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. Geoffrey was an undergraduate at Carleton College and earned his PhD at MIT.

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