2011 Spring Department News

On December 14, 2010, University of Arizona Professor Emeritus Don Hunten died after a long illness. During his last days, he was tended by his wife and UA Senior Research Associate Ann Sprague.

On February 25, 2011, LPL hosted a celebration of the life of Donald M. Hunten. Steven Bougher

(Jonathan Lunine has accepted the position of David C. Duncan Professor of Astronomy at Cornell.)

Dear LPL friends and colleagues,

As my departure from LPL for Cornell draws near, I would like to briefly reflect on the past and future of the institution. LPL and the Department of Planetary Sciences

Congratulations to John R. Weirich, who in February 2011 successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on "Improvements to Ar-Ar Dating of Extra Terrestrial Materials." Tim Swindle was John's advisor. John will begin a post-doctoral position with Kip Hodges at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration in August 2011

LPL is pleased to announce that Ewen A. Whitaker will be honored with an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Arizona at the May 2011 commencement.

Mr. Ewen Adair Whitaker was born on June 22, 1922, in London. In 1940, he began work as a laboratory assistant with

LPL Fieldtrip (PTYS 594A), Spring 2011 by Assistant Professor Shane Byrne

This semester we set off to investigate the geology associated with shoreline processes. It seems the more we learn about our planetary neighbors the more relevant these comparisons become to planetary science. From the relict shoreline features of ancient

NASA Tech Briefs listed the HiRISE HiWish program as the #2 tech story of 2010. The most powerful camera aboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars has returned the first pictures of locations on the Red Planet suggested by the public. Through a program called HiWish, scientists received about 1,000 suggestions

The HiRISE HiTranslate project uses volunteers from across the globe to translate captions describing the high-resolution images taken by the HiRISE Mars camera.

By translating the image captions into their native languages, volunteers make HiRISE discoveries accessible to non-English speaking space enthusiasts.

Due to the response, HiRISE now has three

Congratulations to Kathi Baker, recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Staff Award! Kathi is an Administrative Associate with Alfred McEwen's HiRISE group. She supports over 40 personnel in the McEwen group (travel, purchasing, equipment management, proposals, budgets). Kathi also supports other faculty in the Sonett building, assisting with classroom instruction, travel