Ten days ago, I gave a Frontiers Lecture about supernovae at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium. I spent five amazing years at the museum, first as a PhD student and then as a Reasearch Associate, so it was great to be bcak home.

I've given many talks about Supernova before, but this one was different. Instead of using my usual powerpoint slide deck, I worked together with my colleage, Dr. Jackie Faherty, to create an immersive experience that used the planetarium's astronomy software along with clips from the museum's space shows. That way, we took the audience on a journey that started 2,000 years ago in China, all the way to the farthest reaches of space.

At the end of the talk, I got some great questions from the audience, including two questions from kids. One wanted to know if neutron stars get flattened because of their extremely fast rotation (we don't think so, as they're not very squishy objects), while the other wanted to know what the Universe was expanding into (nothing, since the Universe is all there is; it's only the distances between galaxies that's getting bigger).

I hope I'll be able to give another talk like this at the Hayden Planetarium when my next book, Galaxies, comes out.