UofT Annual AstroTour Keynote: Why Planetary Science Needs Space Probes
Even in their wildest dreams none of those on the New Horizons team really expected the July 2015 flyby of Pluto to produce such riches: water ice mountains as big as the Rocky Mountains, glaciers of nitrogen ice, black hydrocarbons covering aging craters, fresh methane frost dusting tops of mountains, pitted landscapes shaped by sublimation, an ice volcano as big as Mauna Kea, and, most bizarre of all, a landscape that resembles the skin of a snake. Dr. Bagenal will describe how New Horizons came to be, how the spacecraft got to Pluto, and how the findings are challenging our understanding of ice worlds in the outer solar system. Turning to Jupiter, our primary example of a giant planet, the Juno mission will provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars. When the spacecraft goes into orbit around Jupiter on 4th July 2016, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, and measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere. Juno is also the first spacecraft to fly over Jupiter’s aurora and will measure both the energetic particles raining down on the planet and the bright “northern & southern lights” they excite. In this talk she will discuss why we needed a robot to explore planets – and how telescopes would never tell us the things we learned.
About the Speaker
Dr. Fran Bagenal was born and grew up in England. In 1976, inspired by NASA’s missions to Mars and the prospect of the Voyager mission, she came to the US for graduate study at MIT. Her 1981 PhD thesis involved analysis of data from the Voyager Plasma Science experiment in Jupiter’s giant magnetosphere. She spent 1982-1987 as a post-doctoral researcher in space physics at Imperial College, London. Voyager flybys of Uranus and Neptune brought her back to the US and she joined the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1989. She is professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Research Scientist at the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics. In addition to the Voyager mission, Dr Bagenal has been on the science teams of the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Deep Space 1 mission to Comet Borrelly. She edited Jupiter: Planet, Satellites and Magnetosphere (Cambridge University Press, 2004). She heads the plasma teams on the first two New Frontiers missions: New Horizons mission that flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 (after a 9.5-year flight) and Juno that will go into orbit over the poles of Jupiter in 2016.
Schedule of Events
6:30 – 7:30pm Solar observing [King’s College Circle]
6:30 – 7:30pm Planetarium shows (6:30pm, 6:45pm, 7:00pm and 7:15pm) [Lobby of Medical Sciences Building]
6:30 – 7:45pm Astronomy exhibits and activity stations [Lobby of Medical Sciences Building]
8:00 – 9:00pm Fran Bagenal lecture and question period [Medical Sciences Building Auditorium, Room 2158]
9:00 – 10:30pm Reception [Lobby of Medical Sciences Building]
9:00 – 10:30pm Astronomy exhibits and display stations [Lobby of Medical Sciences Building]
9:00 – 10:30pm Night sky telescope observing [King’s College Circle]
9:00 – 10:30pm Planetarium shows (9:15pm, 9:30pm, 9:45pm, and 10:00pm) [Lobby of Medical Sciences Building]
The AstroTour Keynote is an annual event that brings in astronomers that are both world-renowned researchers and amazing public speakers from around North America to give talks in Toronto. The event also features solar and night-sky observing through the Astronomy Department’s many telescopes, planetarium shows run live by astronomer, an Ask-an-Astronomer reception, and more!
The AstroTour Keynote is part of the AstroTour lecture series hosted by the graduate students of the U of T Astronomy Department, and is generously funded by the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, and the Dunlap Institute for Astrophysics.
Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Reservations: Only required for Planetarium Shows (available on June 12th)
Organized by: Graduate Astronomy Students Association, Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
Location: Medical Sciences Building Auditorium (MS 2158), 1 King's College Circle, Toronto, ON M5S 1A8