SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, May 19, 2017 7:30pm
McDonnell Hall, Washington University

First Light: Observing the Cosmic
Dawn with Paperclips and a
Supercomputer
by
Ms. Kara Kundert
University of California - Berkeley

Ms. Kara Kundert of the University of California - Berkeley, will be featured at the May meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, May 19, in McDon-nell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way. Yellow zone and street parking are available to the audience. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.

Our understanding of the first billion years of the universe is hazy. It was during this time that the first stars and galaxies formed. However, we lack the ability to probe the physical nature and understand the detailed conditions of the seeds that have become our current universe. This stage in the history of the universe is called the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). It is the period of time over which hydrogen gas transitioned from being neu-tral to ionized. Studying how and when reionization took place will fill in many of the gaps in our understanding of the formation of the modernday universe. Ms. Kundert will be speaking about some of the current and proposed techniques for observing this exciting period of our universe's history. She will particularly focus on observations in radio wave cosmology, and what they could tell us about the universe we live in.

Kara Kundert is a graduate student in the De-partment of Astronomy at UC Berkeley. She is studying the epoch of reionization and a radio telescope technique called radio interferometry. For her thesis, she will be building a low-frequency interferometer with which to observe the 21cm "global signal" of reionization. She will present her lecture from Berkeley via the internet.

Upcoming Meetings:

June: Eclipse Panel Discussion *Note: NOTE THAT THIS MEETING SITE IS IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ECLIPSE EXPO TO BE HELD AT QUEENY PARK ON JUNE 17, 2017
July: Ryan Clegg-Watkins, PhD - Exploring the Moon from Orbit: Paving the Way for Future Astronaut Explorers - Washington University
August: TBA
September SLAS Collective - Solar Eclipse Results
October: Heinr ic Krawczynski, Washington University
November: William McKinnon, PhD PLUTO Washington University
December: Amy E Kimball - Skype Event - Radio Quasars & the VLA

Meeting Agenda

Welcome

Parking

Introduction of Officers and Visitors

Main Speaker:  Kara Kundert

Astro 101: 

Star Parties:

Eclipse Task Force Expo

Neil deGrasse Tyson Raffle

International Space Development Conference

Library Telescopes

SLAS Coffee Mugs for Sale!

Infini-tees Shirts for Sale!

Eclipse Glasses for Sale!

Other Announcements

Eyepiece kits for sale