An event over 5 months in the making, the day arrived with Dr. Tyson spending most of the day on campus, meeting with members of the campus and preparing for his talk in Tech Ryan tonight at 8pm. The tickets for the event sold out in minutes and over 300 tickets were registered for the overflow rooms in Tech LR2 and LR3.
Students waited in line outside of Tech Ryan Auditorium well before 7:00 PM.
As Dr. Tyson arrived just before 8pm, he visited the nearby Tech LR2 and 3 rooms to meet and mingle a bit with the viewers. Riling up the crowd and giving some of them high fives, the students welcomed him with a tremendous round of applause.
A combined effort between the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics group, NUIT AMPS and the Norris staff, the event went extremely well and the audience seemed highly engaged in the entertaining and always educational presentation.
Introduced by Professor Kalogera, Physics and Astronomy in WCAS, who in turn was introduced by Provost Linzer, Dr. Tyson discussed the Cosmos series with Fox, science in movies, the continued exploration of space, the new Kepler telescope, his discovery of Krypton and his subsequent appearance in Action Comics #14 with Superman . He also suggested that everyone get over Pluto not being a planet anymore and poked fun at the media in how they portray astrological events such as the biggest moon in 18 years, an asteroid coming near Earth and the relationship in space distance between the Earth and Moon.
From our team, Stephen called the show, Zoran handled the stream, while Don and I, along with members of Don’s team, coordinated the event logistics with Dr. Tyson, with whom it was a true pleasure to meet. Pete Dully and the Norris staff provided assistance wherever it was needed.
We took our professional hats off and posed for pictures with the science rock star during the rehearsal.
