September 14, 2006 Source: :
http://www.mta.ca/news/index.cgi?id=1095 NASA scientist to speak at Mount A, Sept. 19 Dr. Theodore Gull, a senior scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), will give a presentation entitled Eta Carinae: A Key to Understanding Massive Stars at Mount Allison University on Tuesday, September 19 at 4 p.m. His talk will take place in the Wu Centre (in the Dunn Building) and everyone is welcome to attend. Dr. Gull is currently a senior astrophysicist with the Exploration of the Universe Division, Extraterrestrial Planets and Stellar Astrophysics Branch at NASA Goddard. He is also the deputy primary investigator for the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), one of the most important instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope, and has a wealth of experience in leading teams in the design and operation of space instrumentation, especially spectrographs. Dr. Gull has published over 400 papers. Physics professor Dr. Bob Hawkes says, "Mount Allison is delighted to have a NASA scientist of Dr. Gull’s stature visit campus. He will provide our students an insider view of the excitement of using space instruments and observations to seek answers to key questions in astrophysics." One of Dr. Gull’s current research interests (and the one that he will discuss in his talk at Mount Allison) is the stellar system "Eta Carinae," a star that has markedly changed its brightness several times over the past few centuries. In 1843 it came close to being the brightest star in the sky, but by the 1920s was too faint to be seen by the naked eye. The star is millions of times more luminous than the sun, but is more than 7,000 light years away. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided a wealth of new information on this interesting object. The star could become a supernova (an exploding star), or hypernova (a large type of supernova) imminently. As a large star, it is expected to have a very short lifetime. Dr. Gull has recently returned from Prague, where he was one of the delegates at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union where the definition and status of the planet Pluto were decided. During his campus visit, he will be discussing this with students in the Mount Allison astrophysics class, and giving his personal stand on the issue. Dr. Gull was educated at MIT, Cornell, and Loyola College. He has worked as an astronomer for over 35 years and served as mission scientist for the Shuttle Astro Mission in 1990. Dr. Gull’s current projects include the Eta Carinae Treasury Project, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, and the VLT/UVES Eta Carinae Project. —30— Note to editors/reporters: Dr. Gull will be on campus the afternoon of September 19. To submit a request to interview Dr. Gull please contact Laura Dillman, media relations co-ordinator, tel: (506) 364-2600 (ldillman@mta.ca) or Dr. Bob Hawkes, physics professor, tel: (506) 364-2582 (rhawkes@mta.ca). We will do our best to accommodate your request.
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