TAMIU LBV Planetarium Hosts Talk on Astronomy

Learn more about dark energy at the upcoming lecture, “Opening New Windows for Astronomers,” by Dr. Marc Rafal Saturday, Sept. 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Texas A&M International University Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Center 102.

This free event is open to the public and sponsored by the TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Planetarium and Guillermo Benavides Z.

Dr. Rafal is project manager for the Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) at the McDonald Observatory. The HETDEX will upgrade the Hobby Eberly Telescope to identify, locate and measure the distance to more than a million galaxies, providing important information on the nature of dark energy.

Before relocating to West Texas, he was experiment manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., where he helped build the Advanced Camera for Surveys that was installed during a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.

He was also project manager at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va., where he managed the U.S. participation in the Atacama Large Millimeter Array project (ALMA).

Rafal received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Duke University in addition to an M.S. in technical management from Johns Hopkins University.

The TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Planetarium has also scheduled a free live telescope viewing after the presentation, weather permitting.

For more information, contact Gerardo A. Pérez, director, TAMIU LBV Planetarium, at gaperez@tamiu.edu or 326.2606 or tamiu.edu/planetarium

University office hours are 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday – Friday.

Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at prmis@tamiu.edu