Before night sky viewing through high-powered telescopes begins, listen to a presentation by Dr. Stéphanie Juneau, Lights in the Dark: Searching for Giant Black Holes and Their Cosmic Fireworks". At the heart of most galaxies -- including our own Milky Way -- lies a giant black hole with a mass of millions to billions of times that of our Sun. Black holes give off no light of their own, so finding one would be like searching for a dark object in a dark cave. However, as clouds of gas swirl around black holes, they produce cosmic fireworks that reveal where black holes hide and how quickly they grow. In this talk, I will cover what astronomers know about these giants, what mysteries still remain and how we are working to solve them. We'll see how the DESI survey, mapping millions of galaxies, is uncovering black holes in unexpected places, including small dwarf galaxies; how the James Webb Space Telescope has found puzzling "Little Red Dots" in the early universe; and how detailed views of nearby galaxies show black holes reshaping their surroundings. Just as the formations of Kartchner Caverns grew drop by drop over thousands of years, black holes and their galaxies have grown together over billions of years, shaping the universe we call home.

About our speaker:  Dr. Stéphanie Juneau is an associate astronomer at NSF's National Optical Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Tucson, Arizona and one of the lead scientists of the NSF-Simons CosmicAI institute. She obtained a BSc and MSc in physics from the Université de Montréal followed by a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 2011. Dr. Juneau’s expertise lies primarily in the field of supermassive black hole and galaxy evolution. She is fascinated by questions about the growth of galaxies and that of the black holes that reside in their centers, as well as the interplay between the two. Her work brings together multiwavelength observations and ranges from detailed case studies to statistical analysis of large datasets.

Program Schedule

1 p.m. - Daytime solar viewing
5 p.m. - Presentation from Dr. Stéphanie Juneau
7 p.m. - Telescope viewing