Spring
Congratulations to Melissa and Nathan Dykhuis, who welcomed a new son, Jonathan Joseph, born April 17, 9.0 lbs and 21 inches. Melissa writes, "He's got the sleep schedule of an astronomer already, and has a head start learning the names of the planets from his excited older brother, Matthew."
Professor Renu Malhotra has been elected as a member of both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
The NAS is a private, non-profit society of scholars, established in 1863. It provides objective advising on science and technology issues. Members are elected by their peers in recognition of distinguished and continuing accomplishments in original research. Approximately 500 of its members have won Nobel Prizes. LPL faculty members Randy Jokipii, Jay Melosh (Emeritus), and George Rieke are also elected members of the National Academy of Sciences.
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is one of the oldest and most prestigious academic societies in the U.S. It was established in 1780 to convene leaders from a variety of disciplines (academic, business, government) for the purpose of addressing critical challenges to society. Notable members from the discipline of science have included Percival Lowell, Albert Einstein, and Mariah Mitchell. Among the Academy Fellows, there are more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Professor Malhotra received her Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell. Her research focus is orbital dynamics and theoretical astrophysics. She was the awarded the Harold C. Urey Prize (AAS Division for Planetary Sciences) in 1997. Professor Malhotra joined the LPL faculty in 2000. In 2010, she was named a Galileo Circle Fellow of the University of Arizona. Professor Malhotra is Chair of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program at the University of Arizona.
More information about Professor Malhotra and her election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and to the National Academy of Sciences is available from two UA News articles: Academy Elects UA Planetary Sciences Professor and UA Professor Elected to National Academy of Sciences. A celebration in honor of these achievements was held at LPL on April 30,
Congratulations to Professor Malhotra!
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by Sarah Morrison
Spring is a busy time for outreach! LPL students, faculty, staff, and volunteers have reached well over 5,000 people this spring semester alone—ranging from introducing preschoolers to “space rocks” to giving popular monthly lectures at Borderlands Brewery as part of our Space Drafts Public Talk Series, a collaboration with Steward Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).
Other highlights for the semester included LPL participation in two events held in Phoenix: Saturday, January 31, at the Connect2STEM event on UA’s Biomedical Campus, and February 1 at the pre-Super Bowl XLIX festivities. LPL students and staff were there to showcase the department's broad research strengths and 500 football and science fans alike enjoyed learning about the OSIRIS-REx mission as well as how we discover and characterize exoplanets.
LPL graduate student Sarah Morrison and OSIRIS-REx Ambassador/LPL staff Jonna Zucarelli show off the OSIRIS-REx mission and how we use spectroscopy to figure out the composition of objects in our Solar System and beyond at Connect2STEM on January 31, 2015.
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LPL activity tables at the Tucson Festival of Books (TFoB) were huge hits this year. The department had a strong presence at TFoB's Science City, with participation from OSIRIS-REx (led by Dolores Hill), Teaching Teams (led by Dr. Steve Kortenkamp), and LPL graduate students (led by Sarah Morrison), along with LPL’s Maria Schuchardt as Science City’s Science of Tomorrow tent manager. The graduate students themselves talked directly with over 530 people about our Solar System and beyond!
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The LPL Speaker Request form has increased our visibility to the community and allowed us to reach a more diverse audience ranging from preschool children to retirees. Keep those requests coming!
We have many more events on the way, so stay tuned!
LPL has a long history and much experience with tracking space rocks. From astronomical surveys such as SPACEWATCH® and the Catalina Sky Survey to the Meteorite Lab to the OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, LPL knows asteroids and meteorites. Now, thanks to a generous gift from an anonymous donor, even more expert eyes will be trained on the sky over southern Arizona. A new collaboration between LPL, the Curtin University of Perth, Australia, and the Vatican Observatory will deploy a network of all-sky cameras throughout southern Arizona. Operating every night, the cameras will monitor the sky for incoming fireballs and help recover any meteorite dropping events in the area.
Phil Bland of the Curtin University operates the Desert Fireball Network which has been successful in the recovery of two observed meteorite falls, the Bunburra Rockhole eucrite in 2007, and an unpublished 2010 event in the Nullarbor Plains of Australia. The network consists of a number of semi-autonomous systems utilizing commercial DSLR cameras. Bland has agreed to provide 4 to 5 cameras for the Tucson area. The anonymous donation to LPL will allow the lab to match Bland’s contribution and build an additional 4 to 5 cameras.The first system will be shipped to Tucson next month for testing, with the remainder delivered throughout the year. Carl Hergenrother of LPL and Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya of the Vatican Observatory will operate the network with Bland.
With its clear skies and desert terrain, southern Arizona is a productive region for meteorite fall detection and recovery. The placement of the network across the region allows fireballs to be observed from multiple locations. By “triangulating” the path of a fireball from different locales, its atmospheric trajectory can be determined resulting in a better prediction of any fall sites and the object’s pre-atmospheric orbit around the Sun.
The new network will complement a group of three existing southern Arizona all-sky fireball cameras set up last fall on Mount Lemmon, Mount Hopkins, and Kitt Peak as a collaboration between NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, LPL, Vatican Observatory, Steward Observatory, MMT Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
LPL’s Jamie M
olaro won the award for Outstanding Service and Outreach at the 8th Annual College of Science Graduate Student Awards. The award, sponsored by the UA College of Science and the Associate Graduate Council, recognizes attention to broader impacts and involvement in activities outside of academic responsibilities that benefit the department, university and the larger community (e.g., representing graduate student interests on councils or committees, organizing graduate student events, assisting departmental recruitment, participating in K-12 outreach, etc.). Jamie more than met these criteria through her efforts in developing and organizing The Art of Planetary Science (TAPS) in 2013 and for leading the exhibit in its second, even more successful incarnation in 2014.
TAPS has become a community event, thanks to Jamie's efforts at networking and building partnerships with local artists, museums, and with local business. For 2014, Jamie crafted a significant new partnership with the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), dramatically increased the participation of the IAAA in this year’s art show, and also collaborated extensively with the local Tucson chapter of the IAAA in ensuring cross-advertisement between TAPS and the IAAA’s own local art show. Jamie also pursued new partnerships with the College of Science, which culminated in a private, catered showing for the Galileo Circle the night prior to the grand opening. Jamie strengthened existing partnerships that she had developed in 2013, most notably with the Tucson Museum of Art’s “Art on Tap” — an art and craft beer festival. Through collaboration with Tucson Museum of Art, Jamie was able to have the winners of TAPS and several selected works displayed while providing free access to the show for artists. Lastly, Jamie also coordinated advertisement for the art show, including talking with reporters for the Arizona Daily Star, UA News, The Daily Wildcat, and NPR. Jamie has also presented The Art of Planetary Science to the scientific community, with posters and talks at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) and American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Science (DPS) conference. These presentations serve to inform fellow scientists and science educators on how we created and executed such a successful art show—with the aim of inspiring similar programs at other institutions and attracting scientists to submit artwork for future shows. As this weren't enough, Jamie also coordinated with the organizers of the October 2014 DPS meeting (held in Tucson) to allow a miniature showing of the artwork at the conference.
Thanks to Jamie Molaro, the 2014 Art of Planetary Science was a resounding success, with more than 200 pieces of artwork from 90 artists and scientists. The show spanned three floors of the Kuiper Space Sciences building, which was transformed into an art gallery. Over the three nights of the art show (plus the special Galileo Circle event), TAPS drew a crowd of over 800 people—over double what we saw in the first show in 2013. The artists sold several dozen pieces of artwork, making over $2,000 for the local Tucson art community, along with several hundred dollars in donation to the College of Science and to LPL.
Jamie's award was announced at a reception held on April 7. This is the fourth consecutive year that an LPL graduate student has won one of the three college-wide awards. Given that our graduate students are competing against the best students from 11 other departments, having a winner four years in a row speaks to the excellence of our graduate students.
Congratulations, Jamie!
Xi Zhang joined LPL in January 2013, working as a Bisgrove post-doctoral scholar on planetary atmospheres with Dr. Adam Showman. His research focuses on developing a fundamental understanding of the planetary climate system from observational, theoretical and modeling work. He has been involved in several projects on Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, Neptune, extra-solar planets, brown dwarfs, as well as Earth. Xi’s work covers topics on atmospheric science, including fluid dynamics, spectroscopy, chemistry, cloud microphysics, and radiative transfer.
Xi is from Sichuan, China. He studied at Peking University, where he earned a B.S. in Space Physics (2007). Xi earned his Ph.D. in 2012 from California Institute of Technology with a thesis on aerosol and chemistry on planetary atmospheres in the solar system. Xi enjoys reading, swimming, and outdoor activities.
Ed Audi is a Staff Engineer with the Cassini VIMS team. His career at LPL began in 2013, but his journey to Tucson started in 1997, when he decided to leave the cold weather of his native Vermont and head west. After working in the telecommunication industry for a time, Ed made his way to Tucson in 2001 to work at the University of Arizona (UA) as a telescope operator at the old 12-meter radio telescope on Kitt Peak. In 2003, he migrated to a position with Pegasus Solutions, a Scottsdale software company, and then to graduate school at the University of Tulsa. But, he says, "I didn't want to leave Arizona and I always knew I'd come back!"
His journey back to Tucson would take nearly six years, during which he worked for the federal government in software development and network operations roles. "Eventually," says Ed, "I'd had enough of the East coast and decided to find my way back out west." He was hired by Tucson's Universal Avionics to maintain and enhance aircraft navigational database software. While this was a good opportunity and he was excited to be back in Arizona, Ed always had an interest in working in the space industry and so continued to look for openings at UA. We're glad that Ed eventually found a home at UA and LPL: "VIMS is a spectrometer, and I work with JPL to ensure that the instrument collects the data that our scientists require. It's a good role for me because it allows me to work with a spacecraft and also make use of my IT and software development experience."
Annie Wargetz joined the LPL family in January 2015 as the new Social Media Lead for the OSIRIS-REx mission. She is a member of the Communications and Public Engagement team and manages the social media presence for the mission. Annie is excited to be interacting with the OSIRIS-REx team and helping to tell the mission’s story. Prior to arriving in Tucson, Annie was a member of the Communications team for the Orion Program based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and designed to serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. She worked with program management, scientists, and engineers to learn about the spacecraft and its EFT-1 (Exploration Flight Test-1) mission, an uncrewed test flight that took place on December 5, 2014, sending Orion through the Van Allen belt twice, where it experienced high periods of radiation, reaching an altitude of 3,600 miles above Earth at speeds of 20,000 mph and weathering temperatures approaching 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it entered Earth’s atmosphere. Annie turned the knowledge into communications products, including lithographs, and interacted with the public at various events to get them excited about the spacecraft. Annie says she is honored to be a part of LPL and OSIRIS-REx mission.
Federico Fraschetti is an Associate Staff Scientist at LPL and Guest Lecturer/Faculty Affiliate Member of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program at the University of Arizona. He joined the department in 2009. His research interests are in the origin of cosmic-rays, the particle acceleration/transport and the turbulence generation at shocks emitted in multi-scale explosive phenomena, as well as coronal mass ejections from the Sun, supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
He earned his B.S. and M.S. (2001) in Italy at the University of Rome La Sapienza and his Ph.D. (2004) at the University of Rome La Sapienza/University of Trento. Federico's doctoral research was on the modeling of ultra-relativistic shocks of GRBs, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. For this work, he was awarded the Tacchini prize by SAIt (Italian Society for Astronomy).
Prior to joining LPL, Federico held a postdoctoral appointment at Brera Astronomical Observatory (Italy) with the Swift mission for GRBs, before moving on to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at CEA/Saclay (France), where his research was on numerical simulations of cosmic-rays and convective instabilities at supernova remnant shocks.
In his free time, Federico enjoys swimming and tennis, playing the violin, and cooking. He also enjoys time with his wife, renaissance art historian Evgenia Diakonenko, and his two children.