Dr. Christoph Keller, Director of Science at Lowell Observatory, will be speaking on the subject of the Sun and Climate.

The Sun enables life on Earth. If the luminosity of the Sun changes, then the Earth’s climate changes. Dark spots on the Sun have been known for thousands of years. Do sunspots reduce the Sun’s luminosity and lower the Earth’s temperature? Amazingly, the sun’s luminosity increases when it has a particularly large number of sunspots. This talk explains the cause of this surprising fact and shows how the sunspot cycle can be traced back thousands of years and how it affects the Earth in various ways.

Christoph joined Lowell Observatory as the Director of Science in early 2022. His research expertise includes (exo-)planets, solar and stellar magnetic fields, aerosols and trace gases in planetary atmospheres as well as innovative optical instruments for astronomy, remote sensing and biomedical imaging. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 publications and received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel award for outstanding research in astrophysics. He is a world-leading expert in high-accuracy polarimetry for astronomy and environmental sensing with the world’s largest telescopes and the latest space instruments for climate science.

Christoph has a long track record at observatories and universities. He worked for a decade at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson and was in charge of the iconic McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on Kitt Peak. He then joined Utrecht University in The Netherlands and became the director of its Astronomical Institute. He served on oversight and visiting committees and also chaired the board of the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes on the Canary Islands. After 10 years as a professor at Leiden University, he joined Lowell Observatory where he works on providing the ideal environment for researchers to do great science.

The program will last for approximately 60 minutes. Please remember to arrive at the planetarium at least 10 minutes prior to the showtime indicated on your ticket. For more information, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.

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