Timothy Lesle

Geoff Marcy is a Berkeley professor of astronomy and, in little more than a decade, his research team has discovered about half of the known planets outside of our solar system. I sat in with him one night this fall as he used the Keck telescope to scan nearby stars for planets. The result is a four-and-a-half-minute(!) audio slideshow in which he explains his work and how he got started in this somewhat unusual field.

The piece is called “California Goes Planet Hunting,” and was produced for California magazine’s recent astronomy issue.

Artist’s conception of the 55 Cancri system courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech and W. M. Keck Observatory.

By Tim | 12th December 2008 at 12:18 pm
Filed under: journalism, multimedia, science
Tags: astronomy, audio slideshow, exoplanets, Geoff Marcy, Keck telescope, planet hunting