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Friday, February 14, 2025
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Stargazing Lecture

Powerful Jets from Supermassive Black Holes
Martijn Oei, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Astronomy, Caltech,

Stargazing is dependent on clear weather, but lecture and Q&A happen regardless. Event will occur in-person, with lecture and Q&A additionally live-streamed on YouTube.


For remote viewers, the event will be live-streamed here:
https://youtube.com/live/r_VBsrkTmsA?feature=share

8:00–8:45 p.m. - Public Lecture
8:45–9:45 p.m. - Panel Q&A and Guided Stargazing

Consider how the sky would look if you could see it in radio waves. Instead of stars, you would see a vista of strange behemoths, many of them appearing larger than the sun and the moon in our sky. These are cosmic fireworks left by powerful jets that originate from spinning black holes at the cores of galaxies. In this talk, we introduce Porphyrion, a record-breaking jet pair that my team at Caltech recently co-discovered using the Keck I Telescope on Hawaiʻi. Each jet spans a distance of about 100 times the size of our Milky Way. Even at a distance of ten billion light years, it appears to us as large as half the moon in our sky! We will also discuss how jets form (and what this reveals about black hole dining habits), how jets journey into the depths of intergalactic space, and what violent effects jets have on galaxy evolution and cosmology.

About the Series

Stargazing Lectures are free lectures at a public level followed by a Q&A panel and guided stargazing with telescopes (weather permitting). All events are held at the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech and are free and open to all. No reservations are needed. Lectures are 30 minutes; stargazing and panel Q&A last 60 minutes. Stay only as long as you want.

Stargazing is only possible with clear skies, but the lecture and panel Q&A take place regardless of weather.

For directions, weather updates, and more information, please visit: http://outreach.astro.caltech.edu.

For more information, please contact Cameron Hummels by email at chummels@caltech.edu.