The next talk as part of George Mason Observatory’s ‘Evenings Under the Stars’ series (where you’ll also get to look at awesome galaxies, stars, planets and more through our 0.8 meter telescope!) will be ‘The Mysterious Origins of Supermassive Black Holes‘ by Nathan Secrest.  As always the event is free and everyone is invited (details about the event: Tuesday 23 April 2013: 1st talk at 7PM, same talk at 7:45PM, observing starts at 7:30PM until 9PM)!  Just keep an eye out for weather – the event may be postponed or cancelled due to bad conditions – updates will be available here – Observatory Twitter

A little about the upcoming talk:

Supermassive black holes reside in the centers of nearly every galaxy in the Universe.  Where did they come from?  What is their relationship with their host galaxies?  What can they tell us about the early Universe?  The talk will discuss our understanding of how supermassive black holes relate with their hosts, and what they can tell us about the conditions of the very early Universe.

And the speaker:

Nathan Secrest is a graduate research assistant at George Mason University.  He began his studies at George Mason in 2011 after graduating from the University of Hawaii.  He is currently researching the presence of supermassive black holes in bulgeless galaxies, as well as the effective utilization of multi-wavelength data in finding obscured supermassive black holes in dwarf and interacting galaxies.  His main goal is to search for ‘pristine’ black holes: black holes that have had a relatively quiet history and so can therefore give insights into the properties of the first black holes in the Universe.  He is studying under Dr. Satyapal.

Directions to GMU and Research Hall here: http://eagle.gmu.edu/map/fairfax.php  Zoom in to find Research Hall next to engineering building and York River Rd