Apologies for the short notice --
Macquarie University is holding its annual Astronomy Open Night this Saturday, October 20th, from 6:30 to 10:00 PM.
http://astronomy.mq.edu.au/opennight
There will be a whole range of activities, including dozens of telescopes, planetarium shows, laser demonstrations, astronomical society and vendor booths, and a talk by Professor Tim Bedding of the University of Sydney:
"Planets and starquakes with NASA's Kepler space telescope"
NASA's Kepler Mission is monitoring the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars, watching for the tiny dips in light caused by a transiting planet. So far, Kepler has discovered thousands of extra-solar planets, indicating that they are relatively common. Some highlights include: a planet that orbits twin suns (a "Tatooine"), many systems with multiple planets that affect each other's orbits, planets the size of Jupiter that orbit their stars in only a few days, and planets the size of Earth that could have liquid water. Meanwhile, the Kepler data are also being used to measure "starquakes", which are oscillations of stars that give valuable information about their internal structures.
