6:00 p.m. Special theater presentation in the Lockheed Martin Imax Theater: 400 Years of the Telescope Discovery Stations in the Museum

7:00 p.m. Meet the Lecturer

7:30 p.m. Lecture

As each new technology complementing the telescope was applied to the question, "What is the Universe?", our understanding of that question changed in profound ways. Dr. Vera Rubin of the Carnegie Institution of Washington will discuss this question, given all that we know today, mediated by the largest telescopes on the ground, in space, and by the most probing methods we have devised.

Dr. Rubin earned a BS in astronomy from Vassar, an MA from Cornell, and a Ph.D from Georgetown University. Rubin is internationally renowned as an expert on the velocities of galaxies, and is credited with proving the existence of “dark matter,” or nonluminous mass, and forever altering our perceptions of the universe. She is a  recipient of the National Medal of Science and in 1996  became the first woman to receive the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal since 1828.

The Exploring Space Lectures are made possible by the generous support of NASA and Aerojet.