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Wednesday, June 05, 2013
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Cahill, Hameetman Auditorium

Astronomy Colloquium

"First Results of the BeSSeL Survey"
Mark Reid, Harvard,

Using the VLBA, we are measuring distances to massive star forming regions by trigonometic parallax.  We routinely achieve parallax accuracy of ~10 micro-arcseconds, which corresponds to 10% distance accuracy at 10 kpc!  The first results from the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy (BeSSeL)
Survey will be presented.  These measurements directly address the nature of the spiral structure, size, rotation speed, and mass of the Milky Way.

For more information, please contact Althea E. Keith by phone at 626-395-4973 or by email at [email protected].