The Astronomical Society of Greenwich will present Dr. David W. Hogg speaking on “How do we find planets around other stars?” on Sunday, Nov. 17 at 3:30 p.m., in the Gallery of Audubon Center Greenwich, 613 Riversville Rd.
Hogg is Professor of Physics and Data Science at New York University. He is also affiliated with the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York, and the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.
In the last 20 years, the astronomical community has found thousands of planets around other stars, and we now know that many or even most stars in our Galaxy host planets. These planets have been found by making exceedingly precise measurements of stars.
Hogg will share at how these measurements are made, and how planets are found in the data. The data analysis—the search for the planets in the mountains of data—involves cutting-edge ideas from data science and machine learning. These technologies are transforming our capabilities in astronomy. Some of the planets we find are extremely strange; most known planetary systems are very different from our own Solar System.
The talk is open to the public. For more information, visit astrogreenwich.org. This program is co-sponsored by The Astronomical Society of Greenwich and the Audubon Center of Greenwich.
