Note: Plavchan and Parks will be presenting via Zoom as part of the Smithsonian Associates program.
George Mason University will be the home of the recently approved NASA Landolt space mission that will put an artificial star into orbit around Earth. It will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightnesses of stars, whether nearby or exploding in far-off galaxies. By establishing highly accurate brightness measurements of photon rates, the mission will help advance humanity’s understanding of several challenging questions in astrophysics, including the speed and acceleration of the expansion of the universe. The science associated with the mission and what astronomers hope to learn from it are explained by Peter Plavchan, the mission’s principal investigator and associate professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason University. Following the talk and a question-and-answer period, Rob Parks, director of the George Mason Observatory, brings the skies to you with remote control of the university observatory, weather permitting.