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Feb 1, 2022

To Catch a Dancing Star: The Story of ‘Extreme Precision’ Spectroscopy

Posted by in category: space

Dr. Arpita Roy, Space Telescope Science Institute.

It has been three decades since astronomers first discovered planets outside our solar system. This profound scientific moment established the field of exoplanet science and has led us on a whirlwind tour of other worlds, none of which (so far) have been quite like our own.

With a few thousand planets under our belt, we are now preparing to hone in on truly Earth-like planets by upgrading some of our oldest planet-hunting tools.

In this lecture, we will traverse four orders of magnitude in improvement and encounter surprisingly dangerous experiments. All of these developments have led to an unprecedented view of the subtle dance being performed by the stars in our sky.

Join Dr. Arpita Roy of the Space Telescope Science Institute as she traces the history of the Nobel Prize-winning “radial velocity” or “Doppler” technique—from the 1970s to current day, from non-precision to extreme precision spectroscopy.

Recorded live on Tuesday, February 1, 2022. More information: www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

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