Department News

The Arizona Space Grant Consortium, whose main offices are hosted by LPL, played host to the Fall 2015 National Space Grant Directors’ Council Meeting at the Westin La Paloma in Tucson at the start of October. LPL’s Tim Swindle, Director of the Arizona statewide consortium, and Susan Brew, Program Manager for Arizona, were the organizers. LPL's Professor Dante Lauretta was the keynote speaker for the meeting. The meeting drew more than 150 attendees from all 50 states to discuss STEM workforce-development issues, particularly those related to Space Grant. At one point, Senator John McCain, who happened to be in the building, even stopped by for an impromptu 5-minute speech (see photo below, with Steve Ruffin, chair of the National Space Grant Directors’ Council). 

During August 2015, Dr. Christopher Hamilton led two back-to-back research campaigns in Iceland to investigate terrestrial analogs to planetary volcanism. The month-long field season brought together a diverse group of students, post-doctoral researchers, early career scientists, and senior faculty from eleven different institutions, with diverse backgrounds in Earth and Planetary Sciences.

The first campaign focused on the 1783–1784 Laki lava flow and involved fifteen scientists. Laki is the largest historically documented lava flow in Iceland, with a volume of nearly 15 km³, and the eruption provides an exceptional analog for high-discharge rate flood lava eruptions that have occurred in the Tharsis and Elysium Volcanic Provinces on Mars. The second part of the trip involved seventeen scientists and focused on the new 2014–2015 eruption in Holuhraun, which generated 1.5–2.0 km³ of lava and is the largest eruption to have occurred in Iceland since Laki. Lava flows produced by the eruption also inundated a segment of the Jökulsá á Fjöllum—Iceland’s highest discharge river—resulting in the development of steam plumes and hot springs that host unusual forms of life.

The multi-disciplinary team utilized a range of instrumentation, including terrestrial scanning LiDAR, Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) measurements, thermal imaging, and low-altitude remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and kite-based systems. Using these different approaches, the team collected a wealth of data, but most important the experience created a rare opportunity for collaboration between scientists with very diverse perspectives. Already the experience has opened several exciting new research directions and established a model for future field workshops that will be hosted by LPL to promote terrestrial analog investigations of planetary surface processes.

Iceland 2015 LPL Participation

• Faculty: Dr. Christopher Hamilton, Dr. Shane Byrne
• Associate Staff Scientist: Dr. Stephen Scheidt
• Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr. Michael Sori
• Graduate Students: Ali Bramson, Margaret Landis,  Ethan Schaefer, Sarah Sutton
• Undergraduate Student: Selena Valencia

For more information about the 2015 field campaign in Iceland, see: www.lpl.arizona.edu/workshops

Photos courtesy of Christopher Hamilton

Staff Scientist Carl Hergenrother is a member of the OSIRIS-REx science and operations team. Originally from northern New Jersey, he began his undergraduate career at the University of Arizona in 1991 and ultimately earned a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences. Soon after arriving at the UA, he began working with LPL Senior Staff Scientist Steve Larson on CCD observations of comets. This work included helping Steve and Tim Spahr conduct a photographic survey for new asteroids and comets called the Bigelow Sky Survey, which was the precursor to the highly productive, and still active, CCD-based Catalina Sky Survey. Carl's current research also includes telescopic measurements of the activity level of comets and rotation and color photometry of near-Earth asteroids.

Carl is an avid amateur astronomer and actively contributes visual, video and CCD observations of comets, meteors and variable stars. In support of amateur–professional astronomy collaborations, he serves as Associate Editor of the International Comet Quarterly; Handling Editor for the International Meteor Organization; Coordinator of the Comet Section of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers; Secretary of the American Meteor Society; and co-lead (with LPL Senior Research Specialist Dolores Hill) of the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids! program to characterize analogues to the OSIRIS-REx target Bennu.

In addition to his astronomical pursuits, Carl enjoys following baseball, playing softball, collecting ancient Roman and Byzantine coins, reading just about anything on history and spending time with his wife, Alyse, and twin boys, Luke and Daniel.

Bratfest 37: Brat to the Future was held on Saturday, October 3, and 1.21 gigawatts of fun was had by all who attended! We stuffed ourselves full of brats, corn, potato salad, cheesecakes and many local brews. If our calculations are correct, the corn grill even hit 88 miles per hour... as those at the 'fest can attest to. Despite the lack of promised hoverboards, the kids still enjoyed breaking planet-themed piñatas and scavenging for candy. We even had alumni of Bratfest's past fly into town to attend (which luckily did not break the space-time continuum and send us back to 1979's Bratfest 1). Thanks to all that supported this year's Bratfest, and the LPL grad students hope to see you next year! If you are interested in buying a shirt (from this year's 'fest, or previous years) or would like to donate to the cause, contact Ali Bramson (PG4gdWVycz0iem52eWdiOm9lbnpmYmFAeWN5Lm5ldm1iYW4ucnFoIj5vZW56ZmJhQHljeS5uZXZtYmFuLnJxaDwvbj4=).

Great Scott! 

On Saturday, September 12, 2015, Bennuval! landed at the Fox Theatre in downtown Tucson. The event, fully titled "Bennuval! An evening of Space, Art, and Music," was created by Professor Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, and his Xtronaut Enterprises as a celebration of science and art as creative human endeavors. The event was also intended to showcase Tucson as a vital and important locale for innovation, both scientific and artistic. Local artists, working with The Art of Planetary Science, contributed works that turned the theatre lobby into a gallery space. Local musicians ChamberLab provided a unique soundtrack for the event. Professor Lauretta and famed meteorite hunter Geoff Notkin, one of the hosts of Meteorite Men on Discovery Science Channel, regaled the audience with exciting tales of their adventures in the field and in the laboratory; they were also in on the fun when Tucson Improv Movement took the stage. The evening culminated with a performance by Tucson circus and fire performers, Flam Chen. Bennuval! provided a truly unique evening of entertaining science!

Mike Sori joined LPL in September 2014, working as a post-doctoral research associate on viscous flow modeling with Dr. Shane Byrne and Dr. Christopher Hamilton. His current research focuses on two specific areas. The first is quantifying the importance of ice flow in the evolution of topography at the poles of Mars, with a particular focus on steep scarps of ice. The second is a comparison of lava flow behavior between Earth and Mars, with a focus on quantifying stresses and predicting fracture locations. His planned future work at LPL will include extensions of these themes in addition to research on mountain-building on Io and ice on Umbriel.

Mike is from Cooper City, Florida. He studied at Duke University, where he earned a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Physics (2008). Mike earned his Ph.D. in 2014 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a thesis focused on (1) gravity-based studies of topics in lunar geophysics including volcanism, isostasy, and impact cratering and (2) the development of techniques to analyze stratigraphy in the martian polar layered deposits. In theory, his free time is spent traveling, playing frisbee, and watching Duke win national championships, though in practice it is almost entirely spent with his puppy, Apollo. 

Daniella DellaGiustina works as the Lead Image Processing Scientist for NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission. She holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of Arizona, and an M.S. in Computational Physics from the University of Alaska. She got her start at LPL as an undergraduate in the Arizona Space Grant program working with Professor Dante Lauretta to characterize mineral phases in meteorites. Daniella continued to work at LPL with Dante Lauretta and Michael Drake, leading a student experiment on the Phase A Discovery OSIRIS Mission until the end of her undergraduate career. In graduate school, she fused remotely-sensed observations of Earth’s cryosphere with the numerical modeling techniques to understand the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet. Daniella returned to the University of Arizona in 2012 as a Research Scientist in the Department of Physics, and transitioned back to LPL in early 2014. In her spare time she is an avid rock-climber and outdoor enthusiast, and serves as a Director for the Climbing Association of Southern Arizona (CASA).

Kenny Fine is a Senior Systems Administrator with the Planetary Image Research Lab/HiRISE. He has been with HiRISE since 2010. As one of the team of systems administrators for the project, Kenny helps ensure that technical issues both large and small are resolved with minimal disruption to HiRISE science and operations. Prior to coming to LPL, Kenny studied Computer Science at the University of Colorado-Boulder and worked in industry and academia in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Denver. He joined the Phoenix Mars Lander team in 2008, and enjoys the daily variety that comes with working on spacecraft missions. Although he does occasional work in the Kuiper Building, you'll most often find Kenny in Sonett. In his free time Kenny enjoys playing soccer, board games, computer games, and well, basically any kind of game. Game on, Kenny!

Betty Fridena began work as LPL librarian in August; she is taking over the position vacated by Lisa Martin, who recently retired. Betty is a native Arizonan born in Cochise County. She has worked at Steward Observatory (SO) for many years. How many? The current SO Director was a graduate student when she started working there. Betty can be reached at either LPL or SO during her work hours. Her work hours and phone numbers are posted on the entrance to the library. Before working for the UA in astronomy libraries, Betty was Serials Department Head at Pima Community College. You can be sure that experience is most likely the reason she started working with LPL serials collection first. 

She enjoys working at SO and LPL due to the international community, the great focus on mission by everyone no matter their position, and the interesting research areas.

Be sure to stop by and welcome Betty and check out the changes to our library.