LPL students, faculty, and staff were busy organizing, hosting, and participating in events around Arizona over the summer and early fall, including Nightwings at the Pima Air & Space Museum and SpaceFest.

Space Drafts, Tucson's flavor of Astronomy on Tap continues to be very popular with the Tucson community. It is a free monthly science talk series held at Borderlands Brewing Company and coordinated by LPL and Steward Observatory. Space Drafts gives local scientists a venue to connect with an interested public audience. You can follow Space Drafts on Facebook or Twitter for more information about upcoming events!

This year's Summer Science Saturday (July 15) was themed around HiRISE and Mars. Professor Alfred McEwen gave the day's science lecture, describing what scientists have learned from the HiRISE images. The University of Arizona Press made available copies of Mars: The Pristine Beauty of the Red Planet. As always, there were lots of Mars-focused exhibits and hands-on activities for kids, as well as an entertaining chemistry science show by Brain S.T.E.M., which played to a packed house.

The solar eclipse on August 21 was a busy day on the UA campus. In addition to being the first day of classes, an estimated 1,000 eclipse watchers converged on the UA mall to take part in viewing events, including those organized by LPL, Steward Observatory, the Department of Optical Sciences, and Flandrau Science Center. Guests had the opportunity to talk with scientists, watch the eclipse through solar telescopes, and learn about how and why solar eclipses occur.

LPL graduate students demonstrate stable Lagrange points at a recent Space Drafts talk.

 

 

 

 

Top left: LPL graduate student Cassandra Lejoly talks Mars at Summer Science Saturday. Bottom left: Ari Spinoza (HiRISE) and Rosemary Brandt (UA Press) showed off the Space Science Series volumes in addition to the new monograph, Mars: The Pristine Beauty of the Red Planet

Above: Eclipse watchers gathered in front of the Kuiper Building on August 21. Below: LPL graduate student volunteer Maria Steinrueck and three eclipse observers.