Hearing the Stars: New Insights into Stellar Interiors

press release: Join us for the 2022 Whitford Lecture courtesy of the UW-Madison Astronomy Dept, presented by Dr. Lars Bildsten, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Univ. of California-Santa Barbara. Space-based observations from the Kepler satellite have provided a remarkable new tool for studying stars within our galaxy, the Milky Way. Simply by measuring how bright a star is over many years, we can now directly measure its mass and radius, and sometimes its rate of rotation and internal magnetic field. This has now been done for tens of thousands of stars across the Milky Way, also allowing us to identify those few stars that are in short-lived phases of their evolution. It's a great story of how theory and observation, together, can make a remarkable impact on our understanding of the universe.

The talk will be held at Space Place and is free and open to the public. You will also be able to view the program virtually on the UW Space Place YouTube channel