Exoplanets

I had an amazing day today, for a couple of different reasons.  I was at the Hartness House Workshop in Springfield, Mass, for a series of lectures on exoplanets.  This is a workshop that takes place a day before the Stellafane Convention starts.  So most of the people in this photograph are PhD's doing their post doctoral work.  One is from Yale, one from MIT, one from Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  And they are way younger than I am and much smarter!  Each of them delivered a lecture on the science and discovery methods of finding exoplanets, to an enthusiastic audience of amateur astronomers. (OK so I will explain here, that these are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system.) The cool thing for me was that I felt I was getting smarter just by being in the same room with all of them!  It is wonderful to meet and listen to the next generation of up and coming astronomers.  The co-chair of the event thought it would be important to do a group photo.  The huge white cement thing in the background is a telescope that was built in 1915, and it is designed to keep the observer warm in the middle of the Vermont winters!