The Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory continues with remote presentations this year. Here is a list of those presentations and special observing events so far this year, along with a link to the recording of each presentation on our YouTube channel, so that you can enjoy each of these great talks again.
"Bullseye! Deflecting an Asteroid with a DART" - Jeffrey MillerThe Earth frequently encounters celestial debris as we orbit the Sun. Our atmosphere provides protection from most of this space rubble. On January 26, an asteroid about the size of a large SUV passed within 2200 miles of the Earth, ten times closer than the orbit of a geosynchronous satellite. What if the asteroid had been much larger and heading straight for Earth? Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Scientists have been thinking about this problem for many years and have a potential solution: what if we can deflect the path of an object on a collision course with Earth? Last year, NASA’s DART mission showed that this was indeed a possibility. We’ll discuss the ways that we might be able to avoid the same fate as the dinosaurs. Jeffrey Miller is an astronomer at St. Lawrence University, and has been teaching physics and astronomy there for over 30 years. He is also a member of the Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory's board of directors. Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 at 7:00 pm via Zoom |
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