SLAS Regular Meeting
Friday, December 15, 2017 7:30pm
McDonnell Hall, Washington University

Radio Quasars – Signals From Supermassive Black Holes

by

Dr. Amy E. Kimball
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Socorro, New Mexico

*Virtual event

Dr. Amy E. Kimball of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico,  will be featured at the December meeting of the St. Louis Astronomical Society. The meeting will begin at 7:30 PM Friday, December 15, in McDonnell Hall, Room 162, on the Washington University campus, Saint Louis, MO 63130. McDonnell Hall is accessible from Forsyth Boulevard via Tolman Way.  Free yellow zone and garage parking are available. The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge.
     Radio quasars are very bright, very distant objects detected by the radio waves they emit. They are now known to be supermassive black holes – black holes containing thousands to millions of times the amount of matter packed into the Sun. A black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that nothing, including visible light and radio waves, can escape it. The black hole itself is not visible, but the gaseous material falling into it can glow as the falling particles collide. Dr. Kimball will talk about the nature of radio quasars and some of the questions about them that astronomers are trying to answer. She will also talk about her work with the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope observatory. The VLA is an interconnected group of 27 radio telescopes, each over 80 feet across.
      Dr. Amy B. Kimball is an Assistant Scientist on the scientific staff at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She assists astronomers worldwide who use the VLA, as well as being on the team that is developing the VLA Sky Survey of radio sources. Her research interests center on the study of supermassive black holes in other galaxies.

Meeting Agenda

Welcome

Parking

Introduction of Officers and Visitors

Main Speaker:  Dr. Amy Kimball

Budget

Star Parties:

Library Telescopes

Infini-tees Shirts for Sale!

Other Announcements