Department News

On November 11, 2009, LPL hosted a symposium to honor the scientific achievements, and 70th birthday, of our very own Regents' Professor Randy Jokipii. About 30 scientists, including Randy's past postdocs, students, and colleagues attended the event, which was held in Kuiper 308. In attendance were several members of the National Academy of Science, including Eugene Parker, Ed Stone, Len Fisk, George Gloeckler, and Frank McDonald (and, of course, Randy). There were 20 stimulating science talks covering a range of topics that Randy has been involved with through his career. After the symposium, a banquet was held at El Charro cafe in downtown Tucson. The banquet was highlighted by a number of humorous post-dinner talks in the cozy outdoor patio of the restaurant.

Melvin J. Simmons passed away on January 16, 2010. He was 87. Mr. Simmons was the Assistant Director at LPL for 20+ years; he retired in 1987. He was primarily responsible for the fiscal management of all departmental resources, including state and federal monies. After his retirement, he continued to prepare income taxes for many past and present LPL employees. He was married to Emily (Tompkinson) for 65 years. His children include Kent, Gary, Todd, and Carl Simmons, Rena Hoefferle, Julie Givens, and Jackie June Graber. He had 27 grandchildren and 31 great-grandchildren.

The Kuiper Space Sciences undergraduate classroom (308) was the site of LPL's first (we think) marriage proposal. Two undergraduate students who met in Tim Swindle's NATS course several years ago became engaged when the prospective groom surprised his fiancee with a proposal in 308. Thanks to Uwe Fink for coming in on a Saturday to facilitate the surprise!

On Saturday, January 30, 2010, LPL hosted the Arizona Meteorite Exhibition. This free public outreach event brought together meteorite hunters, collectors, and enthusiasts as part of an educational exhibition of the largest collection of Arizona meteorites ever gathered in one place. The goal was to exhibit at least one piece of every Arizona meteorite, with the help of statewide institutional partners and many private individuals. Among the items on display were specimens from the two observed and recovered Arizona meteorite falls: the Holbrook fall (1912) and the recent Whetstone Mountains fall (June 23, 2009).

Melinda Hutson (1996) traveled to Tucson for the event, bringing several Arizona meteorite samples that she had classified. Melinda and Alex Ruzicka (1996) run the 
Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University. Anna Spitz (1991) attended the exhibition to represent science outreach and education available through Biosphere 2 and the Mt. Lemmon Sky Center.

Dolores Hill (Senior Research Specialist and Maria Schuchardt (Program Coordinator Senior) organized the exhibition, which also featured lectures by Ed Beshore and Dante Lauretta. We estimate that approximately 350 guests came through the Kuiper building to learn about meteorites and LPL's work in that field. Dyer Lytle has made available some of his photos of the event.

Thanks to Dolores and Maria for all of their excellent work in putting together the exhibition!

Congratulations, David Choi!

David Choi, Ph.D., November 3, 2009, The Meteorology of Giant Planets Revealed Through Automated Cloud Feature Tracking (Showman).

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 martian lakes and oceans, to the current dynamic shores of the Earth and Titan, the action of large amounts of liquid on solid surfaces can be seen across the solar system.

Our trip has two major destinations. We first visited the Salton Sea, the latest in a series of large lakes to flood the Salton trough with water from the Colorado River. In contrast to its previous incarnations, this version of the Salton Sea was accidently created by an industrial accident early in the 20th century. Engineers built a canal too close to the Colorado River, which overflowed and cut a new course into the Salton trough forming a new sea. It was two years before the entire debacle was brought under control and the river restored to its former course. Although recently in decline, the Salton Sea was at first a booming resort location.

While at the Salton Sea, we saw examples of the paleolake shoreline of Lake Cahuilla where rocks previously below the waterline were covered with a deposit of tufa, while their higher neighbors remained dry and bare. Evidence of the ancient lake abounds in this region including the layers of freshwater shells that crunch underfoot in what is now a dry desert. The Salton trough is also an active geothermal area and we visited some mud volcanoes that are continuously disgorging viscous flows of (smelly) material. It's been suggested these kinds of features could exist on Mars and perhaps form an astrobiological enclave.

The second major destination was the pacific shoreline, where wave action has produced a set of geologic features very distinct from the relatively quiescent shores of an inland lake. Active uplift of the coast along with erosion from beating waves have conspired to produce terraces and cliffs at the water line. On occasion, older terraces can be seen higher up on the cliff where they have been lifted safely clear of the waves by the tectonic forces at work beneath southern California. If only wave cut terraces were as clearly visible on Mars! While on the beach we learned a great deal about the alongshore transport of sand and the action of waves in controlling the overall beach shape.

As always, the local peculiarities of our destinations were memorable. The roar of ATVs at a stop at the Algodones dunes reminds us that they have recreational (as well as geologic) value. The Salton Sea itself remains in a sorry state, surrounded by the decaying remnants of its long lost heyday. Campsites at an abandoned mining railroad and Clark dry lake (that served as a World War II target range and radio telescope site in its past) add an interesting historical perspective to chat about when huddled around the campfire at the end of the day.

(Image credit: Dyer Lytle)

Pam Streett, PTYS/LPL Academic Advisor, was awarded honorable mention for the Outstanding Staff Award. During her nearly 22 years at LPL, Pam has held a a number of positions, including Secretary and Administrative Assistant. Pam was also recognitzed at the Awards and Reception ceremony. Kudos to Pam!

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 separate language sections: Spanish, Italian, and Greek.

You can read more about the project on the HiRISE site.

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 Siemens Brothers. He was later exempted from military service because his work at Siemens was itself vitally important to the war effort—Ewen worked on the top-secret PLUTO project, conducting spectrochemical analysis of underwater gasoline supply pipes to be used for the D-Day Normandy landings.

In 1949, Mr. Whitaker became Astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and then, in 1956, at Herstmonceux Castle. Astrometry and astrophysics were his vocation, but selenography, the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon, became the avocation that would lead him to Tucson and to the Apollo program. In 1955, at the Ninth Congress of the International Astronomical Union, the eminent planetary astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper issued a memorandum emphasizing the need for a high-quality, accurate lunar atlas and soliciting interest in a lunar atlas project. Ewen Whitaker was the only person to respond. This resulted in Kuiper offering the young scientist a job on the "Lunar Project" headquartered with Kuiper at the University of Chicago/Yerkes Observatory. Whitaker spent two years at Yerkes (1958-1960) before moving to Tucson, where Kuiper founded the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) at the University of Arizona in 1960. Within a year, President Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon; the "Lunar Project" (and the scope of Whitaker's work) quickly became a matter of national interest and concern.

Ewen Whitaker's research was fundamental to the success of the manned lunar program. He pioneered the technique of groundbased differential UV/Infrared lunar photography, resulting in the first compositional maps of lava flows on the Moon. These maps, scientifically important in their own right, were also instrumental to the selection of landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. In 1961, he was tasked with selecting impact sites for Rangers 6 and 7. He later located the landed positions of four Surveyors; the Surveyor 3 site was eventually chosen as the Apollo 12 landing site. He also selected sites for Lunar Orbiter 5. Whitaker briefed astronauts for Apollo missions 13, 15, and 16. He analyzed Apollo images and located the impact craters formed by the Ranger 7 and 9 spacecraft and the Apollo 13 and 14 SIVB modules. Knowing the masses, impact velocities, and impact angles of these craters meant that equations for impact mechanics could be tested and refined. In between missions, Mr. Whitaker continued Kuiper's lunar atlas project, which included supplements produced and printed in Tucson: the Orthographic Atlas of the Moon (1960), the Rectified Lunar Atlas (1961), and the Consolidated Lunar Atlas (1967), consisting of extremely high-quality photos obtained with the 61-inch reflector telescope on Mt. Bigelow.

Mr. Whitaker's other achievements include the discovery and approximate determination of the orbital eccentricity/inclination of the Uranian satellite Miranda (made possible by a method he devised), nomenclature of 60 previously unnamed lunar craters, nomenclature of 14 far-side craters to commemorate the Challenger and Columbia astronauts, determination of dates on which Galileo made his drawings of the Moon and composed the various relevant sections of Sidereus Nuncius, and the invention of a system for naming craters on the Moon's far side. Not least among Ewen Whitaker's accomplishments is his role in the development of LPL as a world-class leader in planetary studies. Ewen Whitaker retired from LPL and the University of Arizona in 1987 after a long career spent in service to science and to mankind.

Congratulations, Ewen, from your friends at LPL!

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. Images of areas the public selected are available for viewing.

HiRISE and HiWish are online on the HiRISE site. Congratulations to Alfred McEwen and the HiRISE team!