Astronomer Jill Tarter admires the movie "Contact," whose main character was inspired by the 73-year-old scientist, but she told an audience at the Redding Library on Saturday that the movie took a few cinematic liberties.

"It was a really good movie, but it wasn't perfect," Tarter told an audience of nearly 100 people attending the library's summer film program.

The 1997 film stars Jodie Foster and is based on the novel by Carl Sagan. Tarter is a former director of the Center for SETI Research and her passion is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, just like Foster's movie character.

Tarter has a connection with Shasta County because over her career she's listened for electromagnetic signals from outer space at various satellite installations around the globe, including the Allen Telescope Array at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in the eastern part of the county.

One of the film's scientific errors is when Foster, right before a huge kissing scene, describes an equation giving the probability of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. Foster says there's the likelihood of millions of species waiting to be discovered.

Not so fast, says Tarter. "Wrong by seven factors of 10," she said while providing running commentary during the movie.

Another thing that annoys Tarter is a scene where scientists at a satellite station hear some sort of chatter coming from the vicinity of the star Vega. Foster excitedly yells into a walkie-talkie, but Tarter says a real scientist wouldn't do that because it would disrupt the very signal you're trying to hear.

"You don't shout into a walkie-talkie," she said.

Tarter likened the effect of a walkie-talkie to having a cellphone on the moon, whose call would be the second strongest signal in the sky, easily interfering with stellar frequencies.

She also said the movie character Kent wasn't in Sagan's book, but there actually was a blind physicist and astronomer that the moviemakers met in Australia and they wrote him into the film.

Tarter has another beef with a champagne scene. "No one ever drank champagne," she said, and if the scientists ever did, it would be because they'd be celebrating hearing signs of an ET.

Fellow scientists use the radio telescopes in the SETI project to listen for "someone else's technology," Tarter said.

A couple of times, she thought she had a transmission breakthrough that later proved unfounded.

"I've had a couple of false positives that were amazing highs," she said.

Several audience members waited until after the movie to meet Tarter in person. One fan was Sofia Hansen, 17, of Redding, who five years ago was an intern at the Allen array during a summer camp.

Tarter autographed the book, "Looking for Life in the Universe," that depicts Tarter on the cover.

"It was very exciting to have her (Tarter) give live commentary (during the movie), Hansen said.