Category: Public Night

Dan Zafra of Capture the Atlas presents:   Wide-field astrophotography Dan Zafra will share his approach to wide field photography, drawing on years of experience as a professional landscape astrophotographer and founder of Capture the Atlas, a leading online photography resource. His talk will cover the planning, shooting, and processing techniques he developed through deep immersion in the craft, including things that made a real difference in the quality of his images. Those Read more […]

Dr. Jacob Turner presents:   Neutron Stars: Nature’s Most Versatile Laboratories Dr. Jacob Turner Neutron stars are ultra-dense, rapidly spinning objects born in the violent deaths of more massive stars. Smaller on average than Manhattan, these stars have proven to be among the most multifaceted naturally occurring laboratories every found, with applications ranging from studying the structure of the galaxy, to exploring the existence of exotic states of matter, to  detecting perturbations Read more […]

Dr. Elizabeth Turtle presents:   Dragonfly: Robotic Aerial Exploration of Prebiotic Chemistry and Habitability on Saturn’s moon Titan Dr. Elizabeth Turtle Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is an ocean world with a dense atmosphere, abundant complex organic material on its icy surface, and a liquid-water ocean in its interior.  The joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission revealed Titan to be surprisingly Earth-like, with active geological processes and opportunities for organic material Read more […]

Dr. Lara Waldrop presents:   Following in the Footsteps of George R. Carruthers One of the most significant gaps in our knowledge of Earth’s near-space environment concerns its outermost neutral atmosphere layer known as the exosphere.  This region plays a critical role in mediating Earth’s recovery from geomagnetic storms and is the pathway by which its constituent hydrogen (H) atoms are able escape Earth’s gravity and become lost to outer space, leading to permanent planetary evolution.  Knowledge Read more […]