Astronomer Phil Plait will present a lecture about the upcoming eclipse and deep space. The eclipse will occur at 1:49 p.m., April 8. The lecture will be held 6 p.m., Feb. 28, in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union.
Plait is known for his public outreach and efforts to combat scientific misinformation through his website and blog Bad Astronomy. He has also released two books: “Bad Astronomy,” in 2002 and “Death from the Skies!” in 2008. Also, he wrote and hosted “Crash Course Astronomy,” an educational web series on YouTube. In the series, he addressed difficult cosmological topics and dispelled pseudoscience in an understandable way for non-scientists.
Aside from his educational contribution, he has also worked with the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, which was a NASA satellite dedicated to cosmology, and was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope team at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where he worked largely on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph in Washington DC, Virginia.
As a speaker, Plait has given lectures to audiences at renowned venues such as NASA's Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island, Florida, the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and other international conferences.
His lecture will prepare the audience for an astronomical experience by providing a rare chance to explore the science of this celestial event.
