MIfA Public Lecture: "Galaxy Clusters: Nature’s Giant Magnifying Glasses"

Join the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics for a special lecture featuring School of Physics and Astronomy Assistant Professor Patrick Kelly.

Register for the webinar!

To register, and for more information about this lecture and past lectures, visit the MIfA Public Lecture Series website

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT: Galaxy clusters are vast concentrations of many hundreds of galaxies bound together by gravity. They act as giant and spectacular magnifying glasses that not only magnify background galaxies but also create multiple images of them. Dr. Kelly will talk about what happens when a massive star explodes as a luminous supernova in one of those distant, multiply imaged galaxies. He will also describe a recent discovery that individual stars in galaxies more than halfway across the universe can become so highly magnified by galaxy clusters that we can see them one-by-one from Earth.