First Friday Astronomy with Prof. Alex Filippenko

This event is free and open to the public.

PRESENTATION: Professor Alex Filippenko, esteemed professor of astronomy, and the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences at University of California, Berkeley, will present a lecture titled “Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe.”

Dr. Filippenko was awarded the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. He was recognized in the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize for his work with then Miller Postdoctoral Fellow Adam G. Riess and for his highly specialized contributions in measurement of the apparent brightness of distant supernovae, which accurately established the distances that support the conclusion of an increasingly rapid expansion of the universe. (Riess shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.) Filippenko was elected to the California Academy of Sciences in 1999 the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015. In 2021 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. He shared the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with Brian P. Schmidt, Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter, the High-Z Supernova Search Team, and the Supernova Cosmology Project.

For those that cannot attend in person, the lecture will be live-streamed on Youtube at boi.st/AstroBroncosLive. Those attending the live-stream are welcome and encouraged to ask questions via chat.

STARGAZING: After the lecture, attendees are invited to stargaze in Boise State’s observatory on the rooftop of the Science/Education Building, weather permitting. An indoor planetarium may be set up in case stargazing is not an option.

These events are funded by your generous donations. You can donate at: boi.st/AstroGive