Star Party

The Modern Age of Astronomy: Five Incredible Images from this Summer

Presentation by Dr JAMES DI FRANCESCo (director, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory

With numerous astronomical observatories around the world and in space, humankind is now making great strides in understanding the universe.  In my presentation, I will focus on about five (or so) images that were released just this summer alone that together illustrate the incredible scope and breadth of modern astrophysics.  These images will include the spectacular very first ones released by the new ultrawide-field Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile of  galaxies, stars, and asteroids, amazing shots from the Atacama Large Millimetre Array and Very Large Telescope facilities also in Chile of protostars that appear to be forming planets, stunning new images by the James Webb Space Telescope of a nearby region in our Galaxy where stars are forming, and thrilling images from the Gemini South observatory of the new interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.  That said, astronomy is a very dynamic field of research with many news releases occurring each week.  Hence, I reserve the right to substitute one of the above images and/or include a sixth image should a super-cool one be released between the writing of this abstract and the actual presentation.

Dr. James Di Francesco obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997 based on research into the circumstellar environments of young stellar objects under the supervision of Prof. Neal Evans II.  He spent three years (1997-1999) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA and three years (1999-2000 at the University of California, Berkeley, expanding his research.  In 2002, James returned to Canada to join the Millimetre Astronomy Group at the National Research Council’s Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre (HAA) in Victoria, BC, continuing his research into the internal structure of nearby star-forming molecular clouds and developing the Canadian contributions to the international Atacama Large Millimetre Array observatory.  In 2018, he became the Director, Optical Astronomy at HAA and Director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory.

Tickets will be available Monday at 5pm on this page 12 days prior to the event.