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Discovering New Worlds with TESS

When:
Thursday, October 11, 2018, 8:00 PM
Where:
Phillips Auditorium
60 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA  
Additional Info:
Category:
Monthly Meeting
Registration is not Required
Payment In Full In Advance Only
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission is to discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest
stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary reductions in brightness caused by planetary transits. This firstever space-borne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.

Dr. Jennifer Burt Ph.D is a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute. Dr. Burt’s research centers around the detection and characterization of exoplanets - planets orbiting stars other than our own sun. She uses precision radial velocity measurements taken with ground based telescopes in California and Chile to monitor the spectrum of stars and search for telltale "wobbles" which indicate the presence of a planet orbiting the star. She was a key contributor to the commissioning and operation of the Automated Planet Finder telescope, and designed the software system that now allows the telescope to run autonomously each night. 


Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at House of Chang, 282 Concord Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting.