Department News

by Allison McGraw

The 2019 Art of Planetary Science exhibit, held November 15-17 in the Kuiper Space Sciences building, hosted six new experiences and showcased over 200 works of space-themed art created by over 100 artists. The exhibit broke previous attendance records, welcoming 700 visitors over three days. The exhibit was organized to feature two main art categories—Data Art and Fine Art—creating a showcase of diverse work from artists within LPL as well as the national and international community of scientists and space artists. The 2019 exhibit included the event's first special highlight section called "Arizona Asteroid Art," which featured art inspired by the Psyche mission (Arizona State University) and OSIRIS-REx (University of Arizona). 

On opening night, visitors had the opportunity to talk with artists about their work and to rock out under the Moon Tree with music provided by local band Galactic Cactus. The Physics Factory bus was on scene to quiz the audience on their knowledge of women scientists. The University of Arizona undergraduate Astronomy Club hosted telescope viewing on the mall. As a special opening-night highlight, LPL Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr. Ali Bramson and Associate Staff Scientist Dr. Michael Sori hosted “Super Mario Explores the Solar System,” which showcased their series of Super Mario levels designed to evoke the surfaces and aqueous environments on various planets and moons in the solar system. The public was invited to play these levels on the big screen in Kuiper room 308; the activity was a big hit with small kids and big kids alike.

Featured on the second day of the exhibit was local space artist and aerospace engineer Michelle Rouch, who gave a presentation in the Flandrau Eos Planetarium Theater on the topic of technology as a tool rather than a pacifier. The event weekend concluded with a screening of the documentary Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With the Future at the Flandrau Eos Planetarium Theater. The film was introduced by LPL alumnus and space artist Dr. William Hartmann. Dr. Hartmann considered Bonestell to be one of his inspirations and eventually had the opportunity to meet him.

This year's organizers wish to thank all who contributed to making this year's Art of Planetary Science a great success. We hope to see you next year for The Art of Planetary Science 2020: Planetary Science & Science Fiction.

LPL academic advisor Amy Brenton received funding from a University Professional Advising Council (UPAC) travel grant and a College of Science Staff Advisory Council (CoSSAC) professional development grant to attend the annual National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) conference held October 20-23 in Louisville, Kentucky. Amy reports that conference highlights included the keynote address by Dr. Tyrone Howard, titled “Why Equity Matters," as well as conference sessions focused on student support on a variety of issues including mental health, advocacy, and communication for both graduate and undergraduate students. Besides networking and meeting advisors from across the country, Amy also was able to participate in regional sessions that will continue meeting and working after the conference and will help her to better support our students' advising needs.

In July, Amy was named an outstanding advisor by the UArizona Advising Resource Center (ARC). She was recognized for her commitment to advising and professional growth, including her participation in campus advising seminars and advising learning communities on campus.

Zarah Brown (left), Cassandra Lejoly (middle), and Shane Stone (right) at Sahuarita Middle School in the spring of 2019.

Beginning in 2018, the Planetary Sciences graduate students have been developing a partnership with Sahuarita Middle School in order to introduce planetary science topics to middle school math students. The goal of this partnership is to teach students that mathematics is important and applicable to many types of science and to communicate to young students the importance of studying advanced mathematics in high school. The graduate students have worked with approximately 300 students through repeat visits to ensure maximum information retention. This year, the graduate students will present four different activities at Sahuarita Middle School, including a Spacecraft to Mars building game and a scale of the Solar System project (in development). 

The fall 2019 section of core course PTYS 554 (Planetary Surfaces), led by Professor Shane Byrne, traveled to the Flagstaff (Arizona) region to study cinder cones and lava tubes. Highlights of the field trip included Montezuma's Well, Rattlesnake Canyon, and Meteor Crater on the way to exploring SP crater and Lava Tube Cave.

The field trip class takes a selfie at SP crater (a cinder cone).

by Teddy Kareta

As everyone returns to campus at the end of August, one of the first events on the LPL calendar is the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Conference, or LPLC. LPLC is our graduate student organized and run internal conference which gives each member of the department and the Tucson space science community a chance to update each other on what they’ve been working on as of late. We are happy to say that LPLC 2019—organized this year by graduate students Teddy Kareta, Indujaa Ganesh, and Ben Sharkey—was a great success and continues the trend of the event growing in number of both attendees and presentations year over year.

This year had over 70 attendees and 43 presentations from high school age summer interns to esteemed emeritus researchers and included 15 presentations by graduate students. The winner of this year’s Best Graduate Student Talk award was Zarah Brown for her presentation, What’s Heating Saturn’s Thermosphere? Cassini Grand Finale Observations Show Connection Between Circulation and Heating. The invited speakers were 2018’s Best Grad Talk winners, Allison McGraw and Hamish Hay, as well as LPL Assistant Professor Tommi Koskinen and UArizona Gender & Women's Studies Professor Jennifer Croissant. The keynote was by new LPL Assistant Professor Jessica Barnes, titled Volatiles in the Inner Solar System: A View from Ureilites.

For the first time this year, LPLC was held in one of the newest and most environmentally friendly buildings on the University of Arizona campus, Engineering and Natural Resources 2 (ENR2). ENR2 is designed to look and feel like a slot canyon—the temperate sand-carved canyons seen in Northern Arizona and a favorite spot of many an LPL field trip. Professor Barnes’ talk was followed by a reception in the café and courtyard of the building, a beautiful green space fitting for the end of a long day spent talking about science and meeting new colleagues.

Chenliang Huang joined LPL in August 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Assistant Professor Tommi Koskinen. His research focuses on developing models of the upper atmosphere of extrasolar gas giant planets to interpret existing observations and to prepare for the NASA Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE). Comparing the observed atomic lines (H, He, Na, Mg, Fe, etc.) in the transmission spectrum and the result suggested by the model, he tries to constrain the physical properties of the exoplanet upper atmosphere, such as its temperature, number densities of each species, mass loss rate, and radiation field.

Chenliang grew up in Beijing, China. He received his B.S. in Physics in 2011 from the Peking University and earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Virginia with Professor Phil Arras and Professor Roger Chevalier (2017). During his graduate program, Chenliang studied the Lyα resonant scattering within the atmosphere to interpret the observed Hα transmission spectrum of HD 189733b, and studied the effect of electron scattering that broaden the emission line of interacting supernovae. Before arriving at LPL, Chenliang was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Nevada Las Vegas working with Assistant Professor Jason Steffen on the modeling of the interior structure of terrestrial planets. In his free time, Chenliang enjoys playing soccer and hiking.

Fayu Jiang has been with LPL since March 2019, when he began work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Professor Roger Yelle. Fayu's research focuses on the study of mesospheric thermal structure, aerosols, and wave activities on Mars with stellar occultation data from the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph on board the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft.

Fayu grew up in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. He received his B.E. in Material Science and Engineering from Shandong University in 2009. He earned his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015. Fayu's graduate work focused on the study of small magnetic activities on the Sun with SDO and IRIS data. After graduation, Fayu shifted his research interests to planetary aeronomy, working with Professor Jun Cui on the atmospheric escape from Titan with Cassini/INMS data. During his free time, Fayu enjoys playing chess and swimming.

In May 2019, Antony Trinh began a position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Associate Professor Isamu Matsuyama. Antony's research seeks to constrain the interior structure of planets and moons by interpreting space-geodetically measurable global features, such as their topography, gravity field, tides, rotation, and obliquity. He is also interested in the heat budget and orbital evolution of satellite systems, in connection with the geological activity and tectonic patterns observed over the surface of these bodies.

Antony lived in Brussels, Belgium, before moving to Tucson. He completed his M.S. in Theoretical Physics at Université Libre de Bruxelles. He earned his Ph.D. degree at UC Louvain, conducting research at the Royal Observatory of Belgium on various topics, including the relationship between shape and gravity of planets and moons, the tides and rotation of terrestrial and icy bodies, the dynamics of rotating fluids, and the formation of the Martian moons. Antony's dissertation work combined Cassini's measurements of Enceladus's shape, gravity, and libration into a consistent model of the moon's interior. As a passionate advocate of reproducible research, he also developed a Mathematica package to assist in the theoretical modeling of geodynamic processes. In his free time, Antony enjoys a range of outdoor activities, but will happily move indoors as soon as he runs out of Belgian chocolate.

Congratulations to Sarah Peacock, LPL's newest alumna!

Sarah defended her dissertation, Predicting the Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation Environment Around Low-Mass Stars, on November 22, 2019; Professor Travis Barman served as Sarah's advisor. In January, Sarah will begin a postdoctoral position at LPL working with Travis Barman.

LPL is gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing with a focus on the contributions that LPL scientists made to mapping the Moon and supporting the first lunar spacecraft missions. If you have an interest in learning about the role Gerard P. Kuiper played in bringing planetary science to Tucson, consider adding Derek Sears' biography of G.P. Kuiper to your summer reading list: Gerard P. Kuiper and the Rise of Modern Planetary Science (Derek W.G. Sears, 368p, University of Arizona Press, 2019). More information about the founding of LPL is available from Under Desert Skies: How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets by Melissa L. Sevigny (184p, University of Arizona Press, 2016). Use discount code AZFLR to receive a 30% discount on your order from UA Press; the Sears biography will be for sale and available at a 40% discount at Summer Science Saturday.

The centerpiece of outreach for LPL in 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The public outreach and education events maintained a focus on local contributions to the Apollo program, with an emphasis on the contributions by LPL, which was established in 1960 in large part because Gerard Kuiper wanted to study the Moon. When President John Kennedy made sending humans to the Moon within the decade a national priority the next year, the fledgling LPL was perfectly situated.

For the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, LPL, the University of Arizona, and venues across the city of Tucson celebrated the anniversary and the foundational contributions made by scientists and talented engineers and craftspeople not only from LPL but also from other local organizations. In recognition of the local contributions, by Proclamation of Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, July 2019 was declared Tucson Moon Month. Venues and events across Tucson joined the fun by sponsoring Moon related exhibits, movies, and lectures as part of UArizona Apollo 11 50th anniversary moonfest events. The 2019 calendar was filled with a variety of activities, including LPL's annual Summer Science Saturday, held this year on July 20 and attended by 800 guests. Also on July 20, Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium provided special Apollo programming and the UA Special Collections Library debuted a wonderfully curated Moon exhibit, which showcased materials from the Ewen Whitaker collection, in addition to other exhibits and activities related to lunar science. UANews produced a comprehensive suite of articles detailing the LPL-UArizona-Apollo connections.

Thanks to the generosity of the late Shirley Curson, LPL has been able to fund summer travel for students for the last few years. However, the number of excellent applications for that award made it clear that there is a real need for additional funding to help LPL students and staff trying to explore new avenues of research and develop new skills. Dan Cavanagh, chair of LPL’s External Advisory Board, has provided additional support for the last several years, but now the entire Advisory Board has made a commitment to fund career-development travel for both students and staff. We have made a call for proposals to students and staff and anticipate bringing you the experiences of our grant awardees in the Fall 2019 newsletter. If you’re not on the Advisory Board, but would like to contribute to this fund, please do—just make a donation to LPL, and include a note indicating the purpose as "career development travel."