Monthly Meeting September – Dark Star: The Invisible Universe of Brown Dwarfs

This month will be a screening of one of this years Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures.

Presented by Dr. Adam Burgasser (University of California, San Diego)

In this illustrated talk, Dr. Burgasser explains what happens when a newly forming star doesn’t have “what it takes” to produce energy in its core in an ongoing way. This results in “failed stars” or brown dwarfs — objects that were predicted in theory, but only discovered in the 1990’s. Today, many thousands of these brown dwarfs are known, spanning a wide range of temperatures and masses, and occupying a unique niche at the intersection of stars and planets. Dr. Burgasser discusses how such faint objects are discovered, highlights their exceptional properties, and describes what this (mostly) invisible population can tell us about the formation and history of our Milky Way Galaxy.