Dr. William (Billy) Teets, the outreach astronomer at Vanderbilt University’s Dyer Observatory, presented "Light - Our Tool for Understanding the Universe".

Topics covered a wide range.

• What is light? A terminology refresher on the types of energy from infrared through visible light through unltra-violet, heat, radio, microwave and all other forms of energy.
• What makes rainbows?
• All the colors in the solar spectrum.
• Why are there dark lines in the light from the Sun and stars?
• The diference between light from hydrogen (gas) and light from tungston (solid filament in a light bulb).
• How you can tell how far away a star or galaxy is and how old it is.

Dr. Teets demonstrated how filters affect the light we see, how they let us capture light in gray scale and then recombine the parts to get color. He demonstrated how members of the audience appear in an infrared camera.

OK, we've made the point. It was a fascinating hour full of exciting information - way too much for us to cover in this blog, So here's what you do:
There are programs, lectures, tours, telescope nights at Dyer Observatory throughout the year. Public telescope nights are held the second Friday most months.

Visit Dyer.Vanderbilt.Edu to see the lists of events. They are well attended and many of the events require advance registration and fees so check the schedules early.

And watch our Middle Tennessee Group Programs page for future programs.