First Tuesday: The Sky is Falling with Astronomer Shane Larson
Cover Photo by Trevor Bexon
When: Tuesday, July 1, at 7pm.
Where: Winthrop Barn (Get Directions)
Astronomer and astrophysicist Shane Larson is back in the Methow Valley this July to teach us about meteors! This event is free and open to the public. Reach out to Bridger with any questions about the event.
Can't get enough of the night sky? Perhaps you'll want to check out the Conservancy's star party on July 2. You might also be interested in joining the Milky Way Social Club on June 30th, 5:30-7:30, at the Methow Valley Ciderhouse. The Milky Way Social Club is an informal gathering of people enthusiastic about dark skies and stargazing in the Methow. All are welcome.
THE SKY IS FALLING! Rocks and dust from space.
"Shooting stars" can be seen on almost any night of the year if you watch the skies, but each year on the same nights, the Earth plows through streams of flotsam and jetsam in space, creating a "meteor shower" where tens to hundreds can be seen every hour. There are just more than 100 named meteor showers throughout the year, with varying degrees of activity and visibility. One of the most prominent is August's Perseid Meteor Shower, regularly one of the finest of the year! The Perseids are flecks of rock, ice and dust from the comet, Swift-Tuttle. When you see them, you are seeing detritus from the formation of the solar system burning up in the skies overhead. In this talk, we'll chat about rocks and dust from space, big and small — where they come from, what to look for to see them, and what might happen if they whack us.
About Shane
Shane Larson is a professor of Physics at at Clarkson University and the Director of Integrated Engineering and Applied Science Projects in the Coulter School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
He works in the field of gravitational wave astrophysics, specializing in studies of compact stars, binaries, and the galaxy with both the ground-based LIGO project, and the forthcoming space-based observatory LISA. He grew up in Eastern Oregon. He received his BS in physics from Oregon State, and his MS and PhD from Montana State. His postdoctoral work was at JPL, Caltech, and at the Physics Frontier Center at Penn State. He is an award winning teacher, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He contributes regularly to a public science blog at writescience.wordpress.com, and posts at Bluesky with the handle @sciencejedi.
