Sep 22-26, 2025
Los Altos High School
Geoff Mathews
Professor
Foothill College
Oumuamua: our first-spotted interstellar visitor
Science
Humanity's first discovered interstellar visitor, Oumuamua, was found in 2017 while it was already on its way out of our solar system. Humanity had less than 3 months to observe it before it was too far away for even our most sensitive telescopes. In this talk, I will outline the observations, the surprises, the potential explanations that have been suggested, and, ultimately, what future observations will help us place this first known visitor in context.
Meet the Speaker:
Dr. Geoff Mathews is Professor of Astronomy at Foothill College, where he teaches general education astronomy courses and develops browser-based Astro-education simulations. He received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2012 for studies of the gas and dust structure of planet-forming disks. Dr. Mathews then carried out post-doctoral research at Leiden University before returning to UH Manoa to help implement new undergraduate majors in Astronomy and Astrophysics. He has been at Foothill College since 2017.