Lectures & Workshops | California Academy of Sciences

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Astronomy Lectures

Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

Mind-expanding talks and presentations by the brightest stars in the field of astronomy.

General Lectures

General Lectures

The Academy regularly brings brilliant speakers to the Academy to lecture on everything from anthropology to zoology.

Teachers at the Skulls Classroom Kit Workshop

Teacher Workshops

We host in-person workshops at our museum in San Francisco, as well as virtual PD on Zoom.

Science Classes and Courses

Science Classes and Courses

Deepen your connection to the natural world with an Academy science class.

Upcoming

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The Antenna Galaxies are located about 50 million light years away in the constellation Corvus the Crow. The magnetic fields in this pair of interacting galaxies are overlaid on an image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

Mapping Cosmic Magnetism in the Space Between the Stars

Mon. Oct. 2nd at 7:30 pm - Planetarium

Stanford's Dr. Susan Clark explains how magnetic forces sculpt the structure of the stuff between the stars!
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Teacher Workshops

*In Person* Notebooks Outside (grades K-12)

Sat. Oct. 14th at 9:30 am

Explore science notebooking as a tool for environmental learning.
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This fanciful illustration depicts colliding super-dense neutrons stars as the alchemists of the Universe and the creators of the heaviest elements.

Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

Cosmic Alchemy: How Neutron Star Smash-Ups Forge Heavy Atoms

Mon. Nov. 13th at 7:30 pm - Planetarium

Where do the heaviest elements come from? It's a little more complicated than we once thought.
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Teacher Workshops

*In Person* Exploring Phenomena: Using Science to Figure Things Out (grades K-12)

Sat. Dec. 2nd at 9:00 am - Classroom

Experience phenomenon-based learning, and gain strategies to anchor science learning in real-world phenomena.
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Carl Fields studies the computational and nuclear astrophysics of massive stars, their explosions, and the multi-messenger signals they produce.

Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

The Remarkable Death of A Massive Star

Mon. Dec. 4th at 7:30 pm - Planetarium

Carl Fields describes how computational simulations help understand processes occurring inside massive stars.
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An image of remote galaxies from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES)

Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

The Hunt for the First Galaxies

Mon. Feb. 5th at 7:30 pm - Planetarium

JWST has discovered that the first galaxies formed stars earlier and more rapidly than expected.