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Hearing the Stars:

New Insights into Stellar Interiors

Space-based observations from the Kepler satellite have provided a remarkable new tool for studying stars. Simply by measuring how bright a star is over many years, we can now directly measure its mass, radius, rate of rotation, and sometimes, the magnetic field it possesses. This has now been done for tens of thousands of stars across the Milky Way, also allowing us to identify those few stars that are in short-lived phases of their evolution. It’s a great story of how theory and observation, together, can make a remarkable impact on our understanding of the universe.

Lars Bildsten is the Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and the Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1991, where he held a Fannie and John Hertz Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Bildsten is a theoretical astrophysicist recognized for his work on the properties and behaviors of stars, both when they are burning their thermonuclear fuel for billions of years and when they explode as supernovae or emit gravitational waves. He was at Caltech for three years as the Lee A. DuBridge Research Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics and was an assistant and associate professor in both the Physics and Astronomy departments at University of California, Berkeley. Moving to Santa Barbara in 1999 as a Permanent Member at the KITP, he held the Rosing, Raab Chair in Theoretical Astrophysics prior to becoming Director in 2012. Among his awards are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation, the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. He is presently Chair of the Board of Directors of both the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Las Cumbres Observatory.

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This is a free online event, to attend please register with zoom using the “View Event Website” link on the box above.

The Last Stargazers

A bird that mimicked a black hole. The astronomer that discovered microwave ovens. A telescope that got shot. The science of astronomy is filled with true stories (and tall tales) of the adventures and misadventures that accompany our exploration of the universe. Join Dr. Emily Levesque, author of the new popular science book The Last Stargazers, to take a behind-the-scenes tour of life as a professional astronomer. We’ll learn about some of the most powerful telescopes in the world, meet the people who run them, and explore the crucial role of human curiosity in the past, present, and future of scientific discovery.

Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington. Her work explores how the most massive stars in the universe evolve and die. She has observed for upwards of fifty nights on many of the planet’s largest telescopes and flown over the Antarctic stratosphere in an experimental aircraft for her research. Her academic accolades include the 2014 Annie Jump Cannon Award, a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a 2019 Cottrell Scholar award, and the 2020 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii.

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