Black Hole Expert to Deliver Keynote of Carroll Astronomy Weekend, March 27-28, 2009, Celebrating International Year of Astronomy

February 17, 2009


To Celebrate the International Year of Astronomy, marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first observations through the telescope, Carroll College is presenting a keynote speaker from the American Astronomical Society's Shapley Program. On Friday, March 27, black hole expert and high-energy astrophysicist Dr. Niel Brandt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, will give a lecture, "X-raying Active Galaxies: Exploring the Environments of Supermassive Black Holes," at 7 p.m. in Carroll College Simperman Hall's Wiegand Amphitheater, room 101/202. It is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Dr. Brandt will present some of the dramatic advances made in exploring supermassive black-hole environments with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton. He will reveal record-breaking black holes and their mysterious attributes, such as the discovery of powerful "winds" flowing outward from the cores of active galaxies with black hole centers.

"I will also discuss sensitive X-ray surveys that have discovered the highest known density of supermassive black holes throughout the Universe," Brandt says. 

Brandt's lecture begins Astronomy Weekend activities, which continue on Saturday, March 28 at the college with family-friendly astronomy events all afternoon in the Carroll Campus Center. From noon to 4 p.m., the Carroll Neuman Astronomical Society and the Helena Astronomical Society will present star talks, space displays and demonstrations, a telescope exhibit and opportunities to visit the historic Neuman Observatory, built in the 1930s from stones felled in the 1935 Helena earthquakes. Astronomy door prizes, free star maps and much more will be offered. Free and open to the public, all events take place in the Carroll Campus Center's lower level.

Specific events include:

Noon to 1 p.m.: Solar observing, weather permitting, outside the Campus Center

1 p.m.: What's Up in the Sky Tonight talk by Ashley Oliverio, former president of the Helena Astronomical Society

1:30 p.m.: Meteor impact experiment outside the Campus Center

1:30-4 p.m.: Dr. Kelly Cline's astronomy students present ongoing talks on a variety of topics, with each talk approximately 10 minutes long

2 p.m. and 3 p.m.: Helena Astronomical Society President David Rotness will give lectures on the history of women in astronomy and on comet science

The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), declared by the United Nations'  62nd General Assembly, is a year-long celebration of astronomy in 2009, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope and the Johannes Kepler's publication of  "Astronomia nova."

MORE INFORMATION ON NIEL BRANDT

Niel Brandt has served as a full professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University since 2003, after having joined the department as an assistant professor in 1997 and being promoted to associate professor in 2001. He earned his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 1996, and a bachelor's in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1992. After receiving his doctorate, he was a Smithsonian postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Among his many honors and awards, he was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in Space Science (2007), and has won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society (2004), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2000-2007), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1999-2004) and a 1996-1997 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship.

Brandt has fifteen years of X-ray astronomy research experience with 229 X-ray astronomy papers published in refereed journals worldwide. An active participant and chair on science panels and collaborations developing research satellites, telescopes and programs, he has also served on committees that have organized 10 international astronomy conferences and workshops. In addition to his regular Penn State courses on introductory astronomy, high-energy astrophysics, black holes, active galaxies, and cosmology, he also performs astronomy outreach as a lead instructor for the Penn State In-service Workshops in Astronomy, where he teaches Pennsylvania junior and senior high-school educators about galaxies and cosmology.