For the City-Times

An expert on the ultra-dense, rapidly spinning and highly magnetized astronomical objects known as pulsars will give a free presentation at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. It is open to the public.

Megan DeCesar will present “Pulsars: The Universal Timekeepers” on Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Trainer Natural Resources Building Room 170. Pulsars, or pulsating stars, emit beams of electromagnetic radiation that, from earth, appear to wink on and off at regular intervals.

DeCesar is a postdoctoral research associate at UW-Milwaukee. She studies pulsars at radio, X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths, with the goal of discovering new pulsars, understanding pulsar emission geometry, constraining the physics of the very dense matter of which pulsars are made and testing the accuracy of general relativity. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Her visit is sponsored by the UW System Women and Science program and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UW-Stevens Point.