SPEAKER:   CHRISTOPHER W. MAUCHE 
                 Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

TIME:         General Meeting 7:30 pm,  speaker at 8:00pm
WHERE:     The CSM Planetarium   Free and open to the public

TOPIC:      The X-Ray Universe 

Dr. Mauche will provide a general overview of X-ray astronomy, from the Sun and the solar system, to stars and supernovae in our galaxy, to external galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Presentation Abstract

Although physicists and physicians have utilized X-rays since their discovery in 1895, that window of the electromagnetic spectrum was closed to astronomers until they had access to space, first with sounding rockets and then with satellites. Progress in the field of X-ray astronomy has since been rapid: in 1962 a single cosmic X-ray source was known, while in 1999 the number had increased to nearly 20,000.

Dr. Mauche will give a general overview of the many different --- but (almost) always extremely hot, violent, and variable  --- sources that populate the X-ray sky: our Sun and other stars, X-ray binaries, supernova remnants, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and million- to billion-solar-mass black holes, stressing how different the Universe appears in X-rays, compared to what we know about it from the optical.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Mauche is currently a professional astronomer and staff physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, Department of Physics, 1987; his M.A. at Harvard University, Department of Physics in 1984; and his B.S. with Highest Honors from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Department of Physics & Astronomy (dual major) in 1981.

His post-doctoral work was conducted in the Space Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Laboratory for Experimental Astrophysics at LLNL, which he joined in 1990.  

He has been a Guest Investigator on the International Ultraviolet Explorer, Hubble Space Telescope, GALEX, ORFEUS, FUSE, Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, ROSAT, ASCA, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory.

His research has focused on ultraviolet through X-ray spectroscopy of cosmic and laboratory plasmas; accretion processes in black hole, neutron star, and white dwarf binaries; stellar winds; and the interstellar medium, and is considered an expert on cataclysmic variables.   

He is a member of the American Physical Society, American Astronomical Society, International Astronomical Union, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and American Association of Variable Star Observers.