Emeriti Luncheon
Thur Sept 21, 2017
Steve Vogt
Emeritus Distinguished Professor Astronomy & Astrophysics
"Across a Sea of Suns; Charting Distant Worlds, other Earths"
11:30am-1:30pm
Arboretum Conference Room
Reserve/Cancel/Decline (RSVP by Sept 14, 4pm)
Abstract: The hunt for planets around other stars is fundamental to understanding our place in the universe. Twenty five years ago, it was completely unknown what type (and indeed if any) planets orbit other stars. Today, after over two decades of research, we now know that planets are extremely common around other stars, and we are even beginning to characterize such planets in detail to ascertain their habitability. This work has been made possible largely through the efforts of a small number of research teams around the world, one of which is headquartered at UCSC. This talk will give a brief overview of the planet discovery process using the large telescopes of the UC system, and will briefly summarize its most important results that have profound implications for the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe.
Bio: Steve Vogt is an emeritus Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UCO/Lick Observatory of the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has been at UC Santa Cruz since 1978 and his career involved teaching, instrumentation development for ground-based telescopes, and various research projects involving high dispersion astronomical spectroscopy. He is the developer of both the Hamilton spectrometer at Lick Observatory, the HIRES spectrometer of Keck Observatory, the MTHR spectrometer concept for the Thirty Meter Telescope, and the 2.4-m Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory. His principal research focus over the past two decades has been the discovery of extrasolar planets, and in particular, the search for habitable Earth-sized planets around the nearest stars.