Marin Science Seminar Presentation: "Myths of Astronomy" (September 21, 2016) Download the Flyer here.

Much of what we think we know about space often comes from film and television, but Hollywood's job is more often to entertain than to educate. In this presentation, Prof. Thomas Targett of Sonoma State university will sort fact from fiction, taking a tour through the worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and much more.

Thomas Targett obtained his undergraduate and masters degrees from Cardiff University, with a research focus on 21-cm emission from neutral hydrogen. He obtained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in the fields of sub-millimeter galaxy evolution and the coupled growth of galaxies and black holes. In 2007 Dr. Targett began a research postdoc at Caltech, followed by similar appointments at the University of Birmingham (UK), the University of British Colombia, and the University of Edinburgh.

As a member of several large international astronomical collaborations, Dr. Targett has contributed to the data reduction, processing, and scientific analysis of astronomical imaging in the field of "Big Data". These surveys include the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), the Hawk-I UDS and GOODS Survey (HUGS), and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012 (UDF12). His research now focuses on galaxy evolution, sub-millimeter galaxies, and the high-redshift universe.