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Mount Wilson Observatory Presents: Saturday Evening Talks & Telescopes with Tim Thompson
Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO), Southern California’s esteemed home to over 100 years of groundbreaking astronomical discovery, welcomes the public to its first Saturday Evening Talks & Telescopes of the 2024 Season, taking place in the Observatory’s Auditorium on Saturday, May 4, from 5:30pm to 11:30pm.
Taking a deep dive into Edwin Hubble’s early discoveries, the event, “Mount Wilson Observatory and the Dawn of Modern Cosmology,” is a family-friendly presentation by Mount Wilson Science Director and favorite raconteur Tim Thompson, JPL Science Division, retd.
Each Talks & Telescopes presentation, during the six-month season, is followed by picnic dining—bring your own or buy dinner from a visiting food truck—and then stargazing through Mount Wilson’s immense telescopes—the largest in the world made available to the public—after the sun goes down. Both the 60-inch telescope and the 100-inch (the telescope on which Edwin Hubble discovered our expanding universe) will be available for viewing the night sky. Bruce's Twisted Barbecue ascends the mountain for May 4th’s epicurean adventure. Tickets are priced at $50, the most economical stargazing event option of the season. Advance purchases are highly recommended.
May 4 tickets: https://www.mtwilson.edu/events/lecture050424/
Thompson will introduce “cosmology”—the history of the universe—as it was known in the early 20th century, and then briefly review the findings of Mount Wilson astronomer Harlow Shapely. By discovering the true finite size and shape of the Milky Way galaxy (1914-1919), Shapley set the stage (as did Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the "the woman who discovered how to measure the Universe") for Edwin Hubble’s profound discovery (1923-1925) – that our universe is a vast space beyond the Milky Way, filled with untold numbers of galaxies, which he called extragalactic stellar systems, and his observational discovery of the expansion of the universe with time. Thompson will wrap up his presentation with audience participation to illustrate a scale model of the universe.
Find tickets for all Talks & Telescopes events on Mount Wilson Observatory’s website here: https://www.mtwilson.edu/lectures.
Mount Wilson Observatory
Mount Wilson Circle Road & Mount Wilson Toll Road
Mount Wilson, CA 91023
626-440-9016
MWO’s “Map” page shows various SoCal routes to the 2 and 210 Freeways, which feed into Angeles Crest Highway leading to Red Box Road, which then leads to Mount Wilson Circle Road: https://www.mtwilson.edu/1map/
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2396938-0
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2396938-2
