A80 Wonders of the Universe with Howard Simkover

Join AJA’s favourite astronomer, Howard Simkover, as he regales us with a talk on the Seven Wonders of the Universe:

Two thousand years ago people developed a list of the most impressive monuments that had been constructed by various human civilizations. Today we know these as the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”, which included the Great Pyramid of Egypt and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

But in the night skies above us, other wonders were waiting to be discovered following the invention of the telescope in the early 17th Century. In this presentation, we’ll consider some choices for the “Seven Wonders of the Universe”:

• The Rings of Saturn, composed of billions of orbiting pieces of water ice, fascinate us with their size, intricacy, and beauty. The rings are an unforgettable sight even in a small telescope.
• The winter constellation of Orion the Hunter contains a huge glowing cloud of dust and gas that is a nursery for new stars – the Orion Nebula.
• In the constellation of Taurus the Bull, we find the Crab Nebula, which resulted from the massive explosion of a star that was witnessed in the year 1054 A.D.
• Our home galaxy the Milky Way, arches above the horizon as a band of ethereal light made up of the combined glow of perhaps 200 billion stars.
• Telescopes show us over 100 globular star clusters that surround our galaxy in a kind of halo. The largest ones contain up to one million stars packed together into a small volume.
• Black holes are enigmatic objects with such powerful gravity that not even light can escape from them. Yet in 2022 astronomers managed to obtain an image of a black hole for the first time.

• On the largest scale, we live in a vast universe of billions of galaxies expanding outwards in a cosmic dance that originated in the Big Bang
• Monday, September 30, 2024 1:00 pm
• cost: $10.00