Fall Astronomy Day Lecture

Jo Cline Memorial Astronomy Lecture

The Cline Observatory Jo Cline Memorial Astronomy Day Lecture featuring a prominent researcher in astronomy, astrophysics, or planetary science. The lecture is held each fall in Koury Auditorium at GTCC's Jamestown Campus. It is free and open to the public.

World of Webb, and seeing through the Eyes of Einstein

The recently deployed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is rapidly expanding our knowledge of the universe, especially at its earliest epochs. This year’s Jo Cline Memorial Lecturer, Rogier Windhorst, is Regents' and Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and Interdisciplinary Scientist for JWST. He and his group at ASU use the Hubble Space Telescope and JWST to study the formation and evolution of distant galaxies and probe the epoch of First Light by using gravitational lensing of the earliest stars by foreground galaxies.

See this JWST team profile of Dr. Windhorst

The Jo Cline Memorial Astronomy Day Lecture is made possible, in part, by an endowment established by Don Cline in September 2015 with an initial funding goal of $50,000. Interest from the endowment provides annual ongoing support of the Jo Cline Fall Astronomy Lecture Series. Cline will match, dollar for dollar, contributions made to this fund until our goal is reached. Please consider honoring Jo’s memory by contributing to the fund. For information about, and donations to, the Jo Cline Endowment, visit our Support the Observatory page.

North Carolina Astronomers’ Meeting (NCAM)

Cline Observatory also hosts the annual technical meeting of North Carolina astronomers in association with Fall Astronomy Day. This event is open to professional astronomers and their students, and is not an open public event. The 2023 edition of NCAM will be held in the Koury Hospitality Careers auditorium on Saturday, 23 September.

Past Lectures

2022

Rebekah Dawson, Penn State University, "Beyond Eta Earth: Exoplanets as a Window on the History and Habitability of Planetary Systems" Click here to watch a video of this presentation.

2021

Sheperd S. Doeleman, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/EHT, "First Pictures of a Black Hole! Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope"

2020

No Lecture held in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic

2019

Cathy Olkin, SWRI, "Exploring the Outer Reaches of Our Solar System"

2018

Gabriela González, LSU/LIGO, “Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Black Holes, and Other Matters

2017

John Mather, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “The History of the Universe from the Beginning to the End: Where Did We Come From, Where Can We Go?”

2016

David Charbonneau, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “How to Find an Inhabited Exoplanet”

2015

Sean Solomon, Director, Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute, and Principal Investigator for the Mercury MESSENGER Mission, “The MESSENGER Spacecraft Mission to Mercury: Surprises from the Innermost Planet”

2014

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, University of Oxford, “The Last and Next 100 Years in Astronomy“

2013

Don Winget, University of Texas at Austin, “Small Stars in a Large Context:  All Things White Dwarf”

2012

Bob Benjamin, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, “A Visitor’s Guide to the Milky Way Galaxy“

2011

Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-Madison / IceCube, “Ice Fishing for Neutrinos“

2010

Giovanni Fazio, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics / Spitzer, “Viewing the Universe with Infrared Eyes:  the Spitzer Space Telescope“

2009

Hal Levison, Southwest Research Institute, “What Planets Are and How they Form“

2008

Neil Gehrels, NASA Goddard / Swift Mission, “Black Holes:  From Einstein to Gamma Ray Bursts“

2007

Michael Turner, University of Chicago, “The Dark Side of the Universe“

2006

Scott Ransom, NRAO-Charlottesville, “The Stellar Undead“

2005

Jeff Hester, Arizona State University, “From the Big Bang to Big Brains:  the Evolution of Structure in the Universe“

2004

Paul Butler, Carnegie Institute, “Extrasolar Planets:  a First Reconnaissance“

2003

Prasun Desai, NASA Langley, “Mars Exploration in the Coming Decade“

2002

Steve Murray, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics / Chandra, “X-ray Astronomy Comes of Age:  the Chandra x-ray Observatory View of the Cosmos“

2001

Jay Bergstralh, NASA Langley, “The Galilean Satellites of Jupiter“

2000

Virginia Trimble, Univ. Cal-Irvine / Univ. Maryland, “Cosmology:  Man’s Place in the Universe“

1999

Robert Kirshner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “The Universe:  Big, Old, and Accelerating“

1998

John Wood, NASA Goddard, “Resolution:  Latest Results from the Hubble Space Telescope“

1997

Bruce Carney, UNC-Chapel Hill, “How Old is Our Universe?“