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Date

March 14, 2026

Time

7:30 pm

Location

Eastern Iowa Observatory and Learning Center, 1365 Ivanhoe Rd, Ely, IA. 52227

Ages

K-12

Cost

Free

Contact

Gordon Baustian
gordonbaustian@gmail.com
(319) 721-0659

Details

We learn in grade school that the stars are other suns, only very far away. Alternatively, the Sun is a star up close, where we can get a good look at it. That raises the question as to whether all stars are assembly-line copies of the Sun, or if there are large differences between them. Astronomy over the past 100 years has shown that stars vary enormously in their basic properties like temperature, mass (how much matter is in them), age, and diameter. Nonetheless, if we put the stars up on a big “plotting board”, we see that they organize themselves in groups. In this talk, I will discuss which group the Sun belongs to, and describe the intriguing quest for a “Solar Twin”. After the talk, if it is clear, we will use the observatory telescopes to look at one or two stars in the sky that are very similar to the Sun”.

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