The 2013-14 Frontiers in Astronomy Series will continue with a presentation by Steven Rodney titled “Chasing Supernovae in the Early Universe” on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 8 p.m. in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Murch Auditorium.
Most stars end their lives with a whisper, gradually shedding outer layers and cooling over many billions of years. A prominent minority, however, end with an extraordinary bang: a supernova explosion that can be observed across the cosmos. Rodney will describe how we are using the Hubble Space Telescope to discover some of the earliest supernovae ever seen, and what they can tell us about exploding stars and dark energy.
Rodney is a native of Cleveland and a graduate of Cleveland Heights High School and Case Western Reserve University, where he studied physics and astronomy. He completed his graduate studies at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. After receiving his postdoctoral degree in 2010, Rodney went on to a postdoctoral position at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he continues today as a Hubble Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
The 2013-14 Frontiers in Astronomy Series is sponsored by the Department of Astronomy in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Cleveland Astronomical Society, along with the support of the Arthur S. Holden Sr. Endowment.