RSVP and purchase tickets:

Tickets are $150 per person including dinner at the Trustee’s Residence and a visit to the Giovale Open Deck Observatory. In addition, you will receive a complimentary membership.

 

Lowell astronomers have provided the following teasers for you to ponder before the dinner:

Jeff Hall – What’s the relationship between the Sun, a star 220 trillion miles away in the constellation Scorpius, climate change, and a Stradivarius violin?  Find out by joining astronomer Jeff Hall to hear all about how sunspots come and go, how the Sun compares to its closest stellar twins, and how the Sun’s variations affect Earth.

Dave Schleicher – Just over 65 million years ago, a large meteor hit the Earth and wiped out the ruling species: the dinosaurs. Other mass extinctions have likely been caused by “Things that go bump in the night: asteroids and comets.”  What really happens at such an event? The Earth, and we its inhabitants remain a target. Are we next? How, or even, can we prepare?

Jennifer Hanley – In the 1890’s, when Lowell Observatory was founded, Percival Lowell believed there was intelligent life on Mars. We now know that’s not the case, but it’s possible that microbial life once inhabited the red planet. What makes a planet habitable? How do we test the conditions on Mars for habitability in the past and present?

Will Grundy – Remember Arrokoth, the reddish Kuiper belt object (way out past Pluto) that was explored by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft at the start of 2019? Now learn how that oddly-shaped object has upended our understanding of the early stages of planet formation.

Come with questions! (Leave with more questions?)