UH Astronomer Lennox Cowie Speaks on the Birth of Stars and Galaxies

Public Lecture on Sept. 22 entitled

University of Hawaiʻi
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Posted: Sep 14, 2004

UH astronomer Lennox L. Cowie will present a public lecture entitled "First Light: The Birth of Stars and Galaxies" at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 22 at the UH Institute for Astronomy in Manoa.

Telescopes on Mauna Kea, and space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, are now so powerful that they can see 12 billion years back in time to an age when the first infant galaxies were struggling to light up the Universe. Dr. Cowie will discuss how these faint galaxies merged and grew to make the Universe we see today.

Dr. Cowie has been a member of the IfA faculty since 1986 and was associate director from 1986 until 1997. Born in Scotland, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and subsequently held appointments at Princeton, MIT, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. Dr. Cowie was awarded the UH Regents‘ Medal for Excellence in Research in 1998, and this year he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the only current UH faculty member to hold this honor.

The Institute for Astronomy is located at 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu. The lecture will be video linked to the IfA‘s facilities at 640 North Aʻohoku Place in Hilo‘s University Park, and to Ka Lama 103 at Maui Community College. The lecture is part of the IfA‘s Frontiers of Astronomy Community Lecture Series. It is open to the public, and admission and parking are free.

The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii conducts research into galaxies, cosmology, stars, planets, and the sun. Its faculty and staff are also involved in astronomy education, deep-space missions, and in the development and management of the observatories on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. Refer to http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/ for more information about the Institute.

For more information, visit: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu