by Ira Polans, Program Chair

We begin the New Year with a talk on “Explosions in the sky” by Dr. Ondrej Pejcha of Princeton University on January 10th at 7:30 PM in Peyton Hall on the Princeton University campus.

The appearance of “new stars” in the sky has captivated the imagination of astronomers for centuries. The interest in transient brightenings has increased tremendously in the past decade thanks to modern time-domain surveys. The wealth of new data has unraveled unexpected diversity in previously known phenomena such as the deaths of massive stars, and produced discoveries of many new classes of transients. The talk will discuss some of the extreme conditions and open questions posed by the menagerie of astronomical explosions.

His interests in time-domain astronomy started during high school when he was regularly observing variable stars visually and later with a CCD camera. After undergraduate studies in theoretical physics at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, he obtained his PhD in astronomy at the Ohio State University in 2013. Since 2013, He’s been a NASA Hubble Fellow and later Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellow at Princeton University.

Prior to the meeting there will be a meet-the-speaker dinner at 6PM at Winberie’s in Palmer Square. If you’re interested in attending please contact program@princetonastronomy.org no later than noon on January 10.

We hope you join us for what will be an informative and interesting talk! You are encouraged to invite interested friends and family to the talk.