Kalamazoo Astronomical Society
presents: The Formation & Evolution of the Milky
Way
A New Look at an Old Galaxy
Presented by Dr. Timothy Beers
The history of the Milky Way is written in its stars.
Astronomers study their motions and, in particular,
their chemical abundances, to infer how the Milky Way
formed, and how it is likely to evolve in the future.
In this talk, Dr. Beers will summarize the techniques
and recent results that have led to a fundamentally
new picture of our home galaxy, and describe the next
generations of astronomical surveys that are certain
to dramatically improve our understanding of the Milky
Way, and other large spiral galaxies like it.
Dr. Beers is a Professor of Astronomy at Michigan State
University. His expertise is in the discovery and analysis
of the first generations of stars to have formed in
the Universe. Making use of some of the world's largest
telescopes, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope, his
work has led to the discovery of many thousands of stars
with elemental abundances less than 1% of the solar
abundance, including the lowest metallicity stars presently
known, on the order of 1/200,000th the solar abundance.
Such stars reveal the patterns of elements formed by
the very first stars, and are being used to constrain
nuclear physics models that attempt to describe the
origin of the elements.
Friday, April 1 @ 7:00 p.m.
Kalamazoo Area Math & Science Center
600 West Vine Street ● Kalamazoo, MI
Located on the fourth floor of Old Central High School
Use Dutton Street Entrance Elevator access is available
For more information please visit our web site: http://www.kasonline.org
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