AstronomyTeacher

Got this from a listserv I subscribe to from Foothill College.

Event Announcement
=================

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006, 7 pm:

The Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
presents
a Second Century Lecture
co-sponsored by the American Astronomical
Society:

Astronomer Michael Brown of Caltech
will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on:

Beyond Pluto:
The Discovery of the "10th Planet"

in the Smithwick Theater,
Foothill College,
El Monte Road and Freeway 280,
in Los Altos Hills, California.

Free and open to the public.
Parking on campus costs $2.

Call the series hot-line at 650-949-7888 for
more information and driving directions.

In this rare Northern California appearance, Dr. Brown
will discuss how he and his coworkers recently
found an object larger than the planet Pluto and
with an orbit at least twice as large. He will fill us in on the
latest thoughts about whether this new object
(and Pluto) are planets or not. And he will explain
how astronomers are continuing to find larger
(and smaller) bodies in the outskirts of our solar
system.

No background in science will be required for
this talk.

Dr. Brown, Professor of Planetary Astronomy at
the California Institute of Technology, is
co-discoverer of what some people are calling
the "tenth planet" and also of the intriguing objects
Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna. He received his PhD
from the University of California, at Berkeley in 1994.
He specializes in the discovery and analysis of the
faintest and most distant parts of our solar system and
says he spends most of his time "wondering where
even bigger planets are hiding."

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

The Second Century Lectures celebrate the centennial
of the American Astronomical Society, the main body
of professional astronomers in the U.S. They feature
talks by noted astronomers covering the most
exciting new research about the universe.


================================
Andrew Fraknoi, Chair, Astronomy Program
Foothill College