This public lecture is a chance to get a very close look into a major scientific instrument and the experiments surrounding it:  the Large Binocular Telescope.  I’d recommend it for anyone interested in science and engineering. The lecture might be a stretch for middle school students, but just the right kind of stretch. K-12 science teachers are especially encouraged to attend.  Mark your calendars for 7:00 PM, Tuesday, March 29.

I’ve seen the LBT mirrors being ground under the University of Arizona football stadium…each of them is about as large as your living room and kitchen, combined. Come and see. If you’ve got five minutes to peer into the infrastructure of mirror creation, watch the video below:)

The University of Notre Dame is one of nine LBT Corporation Partners.

From the event announcement:
“The Large Binocular Telescope is a marvel of precision engineering with massive scale. With its two 8.4 meter (27.6 foot) diameter primary mirrors on a common mount, it is the largest optical telescope in the world. The primary mirrors are actively controlled at a slow rate to maintain their perfect figures, while the secondary mirrors change shape 1000 times a second to compensate for the blur of the atmosphere. The instrument complement includes pairs of optimized 36 megapixel CCD cameras, high-throughput optical spectographs, and unique multi-object infrared spectographs. Two additional instruments will combine the light coherently from the two sides to create images ten times sharper than those from Hubble Space Telescope. Scientific discovery has been underway since 2008 in fields ranging from stellar archaeology in nearby galaxies to star formation in the distant universe. Notre Dame astronomers have played a leading role as scientific investigators with this unique facility.”