12:46 p.m., Sept. 21, 2009----Harry Shipman, Annie Jump Cannon Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware, will present “Planets Beyond Our Solar System” at 7 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 26, in the Clayton Hall Conference Center on the UD campus in Newark.

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The free lecture is part of the Vernon Public Lecture Series.

While the quest to detect planets beyond our solar system actually began in the mid-19th century, the first confirmed detection -- of a giant planet in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Peg -- was made in 1995, according to Shipman.

“As of August 2009, there are 373 known planets outside our solar system, although we are not yet capable of detecting Earth-sized worlds,” Shipman says. “We now believe that a significant fraction of sun-like stars are accompanied by planets, leading to the question of whether some might support extraterrestrial life.”

Shipman received a bachelor's degree from Harvard and master's and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology. For most of his 20-plus year career at UD, his research activities have concentrated on astronomy, in particular on white dwarf stars, the future life-cycle stages of low-mass stars like our sun.

Science teaching is a secondary research area of Shipman's. His innovations in science teaching, developed in cooperation with other faculty in Delaware's Problem-Based Learning group, have focused primarily on ways to incorporate group activity into large classes. Many of these group activities ask students to make decisions about current research projects, both Shipman's own and others that are active nationally.

Hosted by the Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center at UD, the series is named for Harcourt C. “Ace” Vernon (1907-1978), who was one of the founders and the first chairman of the board of trustees of Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory in Greenville, Del. The observatory is sponsoring the series in Vernon's memory.

Attendees are asked to register in advance on this Web page to ensure adequate seating.