Ron Marzke to talk on April 26, 2006 at 7 p.m.

Astronomer Ron Marzke of San Francisco State University will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on: News from the Distant Past: How Galaxies Tell Their Stories

in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College,El Monte Road and Freeway 280,Los Altos Hills, California.

Dr. Marzke will discuss how astronomers are taking advantage of the “time machine” built into the travel time of light in the universe to understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way formed and evolved.

Light from distant galaxies can take billions of years to reach our telescopes. But when the light finally arrives, it brings us news of ancient cosmic events as they unfold. Dr. Marzke is part of a team of astronomers who have recently found major surprises in the light of galaxies from far away and long ago. In particular, they discovered a surprisingly large population of massive galaxies which were already fully assembled when the universe was less than half its current age.

Dr. Marzke is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State. He specializes in measurements of the structure of galaxies and the stars they contain, as well as the large-scale distribution of the galaxies.

He is a member of the Gemini Deep-Deep Survey team, which is probing the history of galaxies.The series is co-sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center, Foothill College Astronomy Program, SETI Institute, and the Astronomical Society of Pacific.