Gerard Williger

Popular Planetarium Talks at U Louisville:

2008 Feb 12, Jeff Bennett, educator from Colorado,
Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for our Future
(caution: Microsoft proprietary format)

What is life and how does it begin?  What makes a planet or moon habitable?  Is
there life on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system?  How can life be recognized
on distant worlds?  Is it likely to be microbial, more biologically complex-or
even intelligent?  What would such a discovery mean for life here on
Earth? He describes the startling discoveries being made in astrobiology, 
an intriguing new field that blends astronomy, biology, and geology to 
explore the possibility of life on other planets.

2007 Apr 12, 7pm, Elizabeth Kessler, Stanford U,
Astronomy's Landscapes: Aesthetics and Science in the Hubble Space Telescope Images
When crafting Hubble Space Telescope images for public display, astronomers
make careful choices regarding color, contrast, and composition. The best
examples elegantly represent scientific knowledge and appeal to our senses.
In many cases, the pictures resemble Romantic landscape paintings of the
American West. By evoking the aesthetics of the sublime and the rhetoric of
the frontier, the images propose a way to view and understand the cosmos.

2007 Mar 26, Don Yeomans, NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab,
Killer Asteroids: Finding Them Before They Find Us
Comets and asteroids that can closely approach Earth are, at the same time, scientifically
important, valuable natural resources for colonizing the inner solar system in the
next century and horrific threats to life on Earth. This presentation will discuss the
importance of these near-Earth objects and the efforts underway to discovery and
track them. The international efforts to use spacecraft to understand their physical
characteristics will also be discussed.

2006 Dec 1, Volker Beckmann, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center,
The Violent Universe: NASA's High Energy Missions
A synopsis of some of the most violent, high energy phenomena in the Universe,
from collapsed stars to supermassive black holes, and the satellites which explore them.

2006 Sep 14, Chuck Keeton, Rutgers U,
Black Holes and the 5th Dimension (63 minutes; caution: asx)
Black holes are perhaps the oddest objects thought to populate the
universe. Long sought, black holes have recently been "found" lurking
in the centers of galaxies (tipping the scales at a million to a
billion times the mass of the Sun), and interacting with normal
stars to create energetic X-ray binary systems. Now, there are enticing
hints that tiny black holes could exist; thousands of them could
conceivably be found in our Solar System. These tiny black holes
may hold the key to determining whether there is more to the universe
than the familiar dimensions of length, width, height, and time.
Chuck Keeton is a Louisvillian.

Bullitt Lectures:

7th Lecture, 2007 Oct 25, C. Robert O'Dell, Vanderbilt U,
Creating the Hubble Space Telescope

6th Lecture, 2006 Apr 20, Alan Dressler, Observatories of the Carnegie Institute of Washington,
Galaxies, Stars, Planets, and Life: The Birth of the Modern Universe (caution: asx)
Alan Dressler's father was a University of Louisville Dental School alumnus.

Other Talks:

Clip of an interview with Tim Dowling on planetary atmosphere research
at U. Louisville from Discovery Channel, filmed in June 2007

Clip of an interview with Dr. John Kielkopf, Ken Alderson (LAS President) and Pete Strauser (Int'l Dark Sky Assoc) on Light Pollution
on WFPL-FM State of Affairs, taped on 20 Nov 2007 June 2007