Making the Earth Ripple:  Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

Astronomers Irene and Steve Little

The Estes Valley Astronomical Society (EVAS) in conjunction with The Estes Park Memorial Observatory is offering a free public open house/star night on Saturday, September 24th, 2016.  The goal of EVAS is to promote amateur astronomy and education in the Estes valley.

Our speakers for the night are astronomers Dr. Irene Little and Dr. Stephen Little, who will discuss the detection of gravity waves and their importance.

Einstein’s relativity theory predicted both the existence of black holes and gravitational waves.  At the time both were thought to never be observable.  The discovery of actual black holes began in the 1960’s and BH’s are now known in many places in our universe.  Detection of gravitational waves requires extreme precision of measurement, and only in the last year has it been possible to measure these slight ripples in space-time.  We will discuss the method by which these waves have been (finally, after 20 years of effort) detected twice in the past year.  Also we will include a brief discussion of black holes, since the events producing gravitational waves involve merging black holes.

Dr. Stephen Little has a PhD from UCLA in Astronomy and Dr. Irene Little has a PhD from Indiana University in Astrophysics.  They have both taught astronomy in several colleges and universities and done research primarily in Red Giant stars and their surrounding envelopes.  They are both retired and enjoy giving presentations about astronomy.

The observatory is just north of the high school at 1600 Manford Ave. Park in the teacher’s parking lot between the high school and the observatory. The doors will open at 7:00 pm and the meeting will start at 7:30 pm.  The presentation, including a question and answer period, lasts about an hour. After the presentation, weather permitting, we will look through our new 16 inch dome telescope at various celestial objects.