Evento

A Conversation with the Stars

Dr. Evan Kirby - An Archaeological Road Trip with the Keck Telescopes

The Keck telescopes have gone on an virtual archaeological road trip to the most remote neighborhoods of our Galaxy. These neighborhoods are peppered with mini-galaxies-within-a-Galaxy that are sparsely populated with just handfuls of stars. Although these galaxies used to harbor supernovae that produced of most of the elements in the periodic table, those factories were shuttered long ago. Keck uncovers the history of these ghost towns--and their defunct manufacturing economies--by discovering what the few surviving stars are made of.

Evan Kirby graduated with a BS from Stanford in 2004 and a PhD from UC Santa Cruz in 2009. He has been an assistant professor of astronomy & astrophysics at Caltech since 2014. He specializes in using stellar spectroscopy to measure the content of stars in the nearby universe. His research gives us insight on where and how the elements of the periodic table are created, as well as how they are dispersed into the universe to make stars and solar systems like our own. His primary source of data is the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.