Supernova Hunter To Host Astronomy Ireland Lecture

Edited byMark Dunphy

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Tom Boles

The Universe is massive. It’s so big that astronomers don’t use everyday measurements like miles or kilometres when talking about it; instead, they use units known as light-years, which is the distance light travels in one year. One light year is 9,400,000,000,000 km.

At Astronomy Ireland’s Public Lecture on September 12th in Trinity College Dublin, the world record supernova hunter, Tom Boles, will explain how certain types of exploding stars – supernovae – allow us to measure how far away they are by monitoring their brightness. Thanks to these, we know that there are galaxies out there that are tens, hundreds, and thousands of millions of light-years away from our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

In the 1990s, a strange discovery was made. Previously it was thought that the Universe’s expansion was slowing down, and might eventually be coming to a stop. Using supernovae, astronomers discovered that the expansion of the Universe is actually accelerating.

“This was a result we weren’t expecting,” said David Moore, Chairman of Astronomy Ireland. “It turned out that the Universe was getting even bigger, and very quickly! Astronomers realised something was causing this acceleration, and they dubbed it ‘Dark Energy’.”

Dark energy is the cause of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Like it’s counterpart, dark matter (which causes gravitational contraction), it’s called ‘dark’ as we cannot see where it comes from.

Tom Boles has discovered a staggering 125 supernovae to date from his private observatory in Suffolk, UK. When he’s not discovering intergalactic beacons, he writes for numerous publications and appears on a number of TV shows, including the BBC’s Sky at Night. He also co-presented Tomorrow’s World, and has been broadcast across a host of radio stations globally.

The forthcoming lecture is suitable for the general public, and people of all ages and experience. Tickets for the lecture are only €7, and can be ordered online at www.astronomy.ie or by calling (01) 890 11 11.

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