Kelseyville >> To an alien on a distant exo-planet, the earth’s sun would just appear as just a another white dot in a galaxy filled with stars. But on earth we know that there’s a lot more going on with the sun.
Though it wasn’t always that way. In the middle of the 19th century those claiming that the sun influenced such things a weather on earth were in the minority. But gradually that changed; for example in the fall of 1859 a coronal mass ejection, now called the Carrington Event, caused the east coast telegraph system to begin to run without batteries and produced aurora of unprecedented brilliance.
Today the sun is monitored continuously both on earth and more recently on orbiting satellite-based observatories. These research activities produce a much deeper understanding of our sun’s importance to earthlings.
Taylor observatory’s special February speaker, Stanford professor Philip Scherrer, has played a key role in contemporary solar science studies, in large part through his role in designing and operating instrumentation on the orbiting solar observatory.
This Saturday Scherrer will enlighten the Taylor audience with a rendition of his current research on solar phenomena involving both satellite and earth based observation.
The evening at Taylor begins with a planetarium show at 7:15 p.m., followed by the lecture at 8 p.m. and a second planetarium show around 9 p.m.
Telescope viewing will begin after the talk, weather permitting. With the waxing moon still below the horizon at show time, observations through the Taylor’s telescopes should be good, with Jupiter just coming into view in the east, and a number of nebula and galaxies visible in the dark Lake County skies.
Friends of Taylor Observatory-Norton Planetarium sponsors the program.
Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children 12 and younger.
Taylor observatory is located at the end of Oak Hills Lane in Kelseyville. For further information call (415) 209-3084, consult the website www.taylorobservatory.org or visit the Friends of Taylor Facebook page.
