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"Unafraid of the Dark" w/speakers celebrates Voyager missions

Friday, October 20, 2017 at 4:45pm

Willard Straight Theatre
Central Campus

Only one human-touched object has ever entered interstellar space: NASA’s Voyager 1, bearing with it greetings to extraterrestrials in the form of a Golden Record. Cornell will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Voyagers 1 and 2 and Cornell’s central role in the missions and the Golden Record in a weekend of events beginning Oct. 19. All events are free and the public is invited.

"Unafraid of the Dark," the episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey that features the Voyager mission, (the series finale), will screen on Oct. 20 at 4:45 pm, in Cornell Cinema, Willard Straight Hall. The screening will be introduced by Andrew Hicks, assistant professor of music; after the film After the film Druyan, producer, director, and co-writer of the episode along with Ozma Records co-founder David Pescovitz and designer Lawrence Azerrad, co-producers of the Golden Record boxed set, will offer reflections and answer questions.

The pioneering NASA Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 from Cape Canaveral to explore the solar system. They are still the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. The gravitational assist from Jupiter that slingshot the Voyagers on the first reconnaissance of the outer solar system, propels them on a much greater odyssey throughout the Milky Way Galaxy for the next several billion years.  With that unprecedented opportunity in mind, each Voyager bears a complex message affixed to its side in the form of the Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-covered copper record containing greetings, images of life on Earth, world music and other sounds of this planet. They have a shelf-life of one to five billion years.

“40 Years of Cosmic Discovery” is sponsored by the Department of Astronomy, the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Carl Sagan Institute, which conducts an interdisciplinary search for life in the universe.

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Event Type

Film

Departments

Astronomy, Cornell Cinema

Tags

cascal, casfeatured

Cost

Free

Group
Cornell Cinema
Contact E-Mail

jtm14@cornell.edu

Contact Name

Jill Tarbell

Contact Phone

607-255-6920

Speaker

Ann Druyan, Prof. Andrew Hicks, David Pescovitz

Disability Access Information

Accessible

Open To

All public

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