Last month I got the chance to speak at TEDxBerkeley: Moonshot! It was my first TED event and a wonderful chance to meet and hear fascinating speakers and share the stories of astronomy with a great crowd. In my talk I tell the story of Oscar Duhalde, the only living person on the planet to discover a supernova with the naked eye; shared the adventures (and misadventures) of observational astronomy in the era of glass photographic plates; and reviewed the amazing things we’ve learned about the universe with yesterday’s technology and the incredible advances coming our way with tomorrow’s. These are the same themes that I explore in my upcoming first popular science book, The Last Stargazers, which will be coming out in August.

The talk is now online; you can view it here or on YouTube!