Newsletter Newsletter Published on Division for Planetary Sciences ( Issue 15-42, October 1, 2015

Transcription

1 Newsletter Issue 15-42, October 1, CONTENTS UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR THE 47th DPS MEETING IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MD DPS WOMEN IN PLANETARY SCIENCE DISCUSSION HOUR THE FIRST DPS OPEN MIC NIGHT NASA ASTROPHYSICS ASSETS WORKSHOP AT DPS NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TOURS AT DPS SBAG MEETING 14: EARLY CAREER TRAVEL SUPPORT LPSC SPECIAL SESSION DEADLINE UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR THE 47th DPS MEETING IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MD National Harbor, MD, 8-13 November 2015 at the Gaylord National Harbor [1] DPS members you are invited to attend the 47th Annual DPS meeting! * Important dates 8 October 2015 DPS 47 Regular Registration Deadline [2] And also: American Astronomical Society. Page 1 of 9

2 - 1 October: Women in Planetary Science Discussion Hour Boxed Lunch Order Deadline - 8 October: 47th DPS Hotel Reservations Deadline -21 October: DPS Open Mic Night Submission The DPS is grateful to our Meeting Sponsors: Lockheed Martin Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Orbital ATK Elsevier University of Arizona Press Southwest Research Institute Space Telescope Science Institute Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Space Science Institute AURA DPS WOMEN IN PLANETARY SCIENCE DISCUSSION HOUR Join us on Tuesday, Nov. 10th from 12:00-1:30 pm for the annual DPS Women in Planetary Science event. Amy Simon will give a keynote address titled Navigating Hurdles Throughout Your Career and discussion will be formulated around the various topics that arise. Please feel free to bring any information/announcements related to women in astronomy and planetary science to share. Due to the generosity of the DPS committee and a donation from the Space Science Institute, we will be able to provide boxed lunches this year. All are welcome! Pre-registration at [3] is required due to space limitations. Lunch orders must be placed by Oct. 1st. The event will take place in the Baltimore 3 room. Page 2 of 9

3 Contact [4] with questions. Newsletter THE FIRST DPS OPEN MIC NIGHT The DPS Open Mic Night allows our members to share their musical and other talents with their friends and colleagues. Premiering Wednesday, 11 November from 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm, we invite all musicians, singers, story tellers, comedians, poets, spoken word enthusiasts or other performers (e.g. jugglers) to participate. Come have some fun and strut your stuff! Sign up at [5] to ensure a spot and let us know what kind of equipment you need to perform. You can decide to participate on-site as well, but signing up early helps us ensure the proper equipment is available. Performance slots will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Deadline for submissions: 21 October NASA ASTROPHYSICS ASSETS WORKSHOP AT DPS Astrophysics Asset Workshop Division for Planetary Sciences Tuesday, November 10th, 2015 Location: Azalea 1 Agenda and Abstracts 8:00 am 8:30 am == Welcome and Announcements 8:30 am 9:00 am == PDS (30 minutes) 9:00 am 10:30 am == K2 (90 minutes) 10:30 am 11:00 am == SOFIA (30 minutes) 11:00 am 12:00 noon == Spitzer (60 minutes) Page 3 of 9

4 12:00 pm 12:30 pm == Lunch break 12:30 pm 1:30 pm == HST + JWST 1:30 pm 2:15 pm == IRSA + NEOWISE (45 minutes) 2:15 pm 4:15 pm == Keck (2hrs) 4:15 pm 4:45 pm == IRTF (30 minutes) The Planetary Data System (PDS) archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements. The PDS is sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Its purpose is to ensure the long-term usability of NASA data and to stimulate advanced research. All PDS data are publicly available and may be exported outside of United States under "Technology and software Publicly Available" (TSPA) classification. This presentation will focus on the new DPS roadmap activity and invite the users to join the team in demonstration at the NASA-PDS booth. HST and JWST are the leading present and near-term space-based observatories, and offer exceptional capabilities for Solar System science. We will review current status and accomplishments of these missions, and present various science-policy aspects that are of interest for the DPS community. The K2 mission makes used of the Kepler spacecraft and expands of its groundbreaking discoveries. The fields observed by K2 are close to the ecliptic planet and hence are thus rich in Solar System objects including planets, asteroids and trans-neptunian objects (TNOs). K2 has already performed observations of Neptune and its large moon Triton, 68 Trojan and Hilda asteroids, 5 TNOs (including Pluto) and Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring). About thousands of main-belt asteroids that fell into the pixel masks of stars have been have been serendipitously observed. Uranus will be observed in a future campaign (C8), as will many more small Solar System bodies. Observations of moving bodies as bright as Jupiter and as faint as V=23 have proved successful. K2 has an ongoing funded Guest Observer program and which has been successfully proposed to by members of the planetary science community. We present K2 s plans and capabilities for solar system science and will have presentations by members of the planetary science community who have used K2 data. This workshop: * Contains information about the mission and its capabilities Page 4 of 9

5 * Discusses the proposal cycles and provides examples * Has community folks talking about their K2 science Newsletter The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy makes observations at far-infrared wavelengths possible. In particular, the range of wavelengths from microns is nearly completely obscured form the ground, including our best mountaintop observatories. By flying in the stratosphere above 95% of atmospheric water vapor, access is opened to photometric, spectroscopic, and polarimetric observations of Solar System targets including small bodies through the major planets. Extrasolar planetary systems can be observed through their debris disks, and forming planetary systems through the protoplanetary disks. We will brief the professional planetary science community on the capabilities of the observatory and its scientific instrumentation, the operation of the observatory, the proposal and planning process, and opportunities for involvement in the observatory itself. The Spitzer Space Telescope is NASA s Infrared Great Observatory and can operate until the launch of JWST in % of the observing time on Spitzer is available through annual calls for proposals and Director s Discretionary Time. The IRAC instrument provides unparalleled sensitivity at 3.6 and 4.5 microns that will only be superseded by JWST. For solar system observations Spitzer supports non-sidereal tracking rates of up to 1 arcsec per second, as well as the ability to do shadow observations for moving targets. Cycle-11 included more than 1000 hours of solar system observations studying the compositions of near-earth asteroids and comets, near-earth object characterization, and observations of Pluto in support of the New Horizons mission. We will present Spitzer s capabilities, future plans, and some science results from previous and ongoing planetary programs. The Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) is the repository for science products from NASA's infrared and submillimeter missions, including many large-area and all-sky surveys. IRSA's portion of the workshop will describe our tools and datasets of interest to the DPS community, including: how to get moving object observations out of the Spitzer and WISE archives, the WISE Co-Adder (which can sum up (NEO)WISE observations of moving targets), and the moving object "Pre-covery tool. We will briefly cover other tools, such as FinderChart, and other archives at IRSA, such as the Herschel and Planck archives. Page 5 of 9

6 The two W.M. Keck Observatory 10m telescopes regularly observe the increasingly dynamic and diverse body of objects in our solar system. Every US member of the solar system community has the opportunity to apply for time on the Keck telescopes through NASA's call for proposals each March and September. Through this workshop, NASA and Keck Observatory seek to grow the Keck solar system observing community. We will present Keck's current and future instrument capabilities as well as recent solar system science highlights from high spatial and spectral resolution imaging and spectroscopy. Although much information has been gained through spectroscopy of planets, comets, and Kuiper belt objects, many current solar system observers also take advantage of the adaptive optics systems on both Keck 1 and Keck 2 to determine rotation axes and pinpoint orbits with high astrometric precision. Invited DPS members will share some of their recent Keck results pertaining to planetary atmospheres, comets, Pluto, and transneptunian objects. We will also provide information on how you can gain access to the NASA portion of Keck time, the only way that PIs from non Keck-member institutions can gain access, and highlight resources that are available for your use in the proposal planning process. 2:15-2:45 Keck Observatory Overview, instrument current and future capabilities, and planning tools available for proposal preparation - Greg Doppmann and Marc Kassis 2:45-3:00 How to gain access through NASA's proposal process - Dawn Gelino 3:00-3:15 NIRSPEC reads Mar's H2O history - Geronimo Villanueva 3:15-3:30 Chemistry of comets - Neil Dello Russo 3:30-3:45 Keck observations of planetary atmospheres - Imke de Pater 3:45-3:50 Complimenting New Horizons with Keck observations of Pluto - Eliot Young 4:00-4:15 Adaptive optics observations of transneptunian binaries - Will Grundy The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) is a dedicated observatory for mission support and planetary science research, with 50% of the telescope time allocated to solar system observations. Instruments currently available include SpeX (a low to moderate spectral resolution 1-5 micron spectrograph and imager), CSHELL (a high-resolution 1-5 micron infrared spectrograph), MORIS (a CCD camera used in conjunction with SpeX), and Page 6 of 9

7 visitor spectrographs covering 5-24 microns. For information, see [6]. We plan to commission ishell, a new cross-dispersed, high-resolution spectrograph for 1-5 microns, during semester 2016A. We are also upgrading MIRSI, our 8-26 micron camera, and it should be available during 2017A. The IRTF offers remote observing from any site with adequate internet connection, flexible scheduling (time slots as short as one hour), and daytime observing. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has observed all the planets in our Solar System, apart from Earth and Mercury. Earth is far better studied by geologists on the ground and specialised probes in orbit. Hubble can t observe Mercury as it is too close to the Sun, whose brightness would damage the telescope s sensitive instruments. In this presentation, we give a HST Status and Capabilities update with New APT Features for Solar System; followed by JWST/HST science policy presentation NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TOURS DURING DPS NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will offer on-site tours from 1-6 pm on November 12, 2015 to US citizens and foreign nationals from non-designated countries (see list here: [7]) that are pre-registered by October 26 through this online form and are registered participants of the AAS DPS Meeting. The community has expressed interest in visiting the center and seeing the latest developments on site for new/current missions, research labs, and other facilities. Goddard has one of the largest conglomerates of planetary science in the U.S. Tours at GSFC will highlight OSIRIS-Rex, LRO, the multiple Mars missions/developments, the Astrobiology Analytical laboratory, and the James Webb Space Telescope. Please register here: [8] If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Stefanie Milam [9] (stefanie.n.milam at nasa.gov [10]). We look forward to your visit SBAG MEETING 14: EARLY CAREER TRAVEL SUPPORT Page 7 of 9

8 The SBAG 14 meeting is scheduled for January 27-29, 2016 in Pasadena, CA. Logistical details for the specific location are still in the process of being finalized, and we anticipate having a draft agenda on the SBAG website in early October. ** If you typically use the NASA Conference Tracking System for your travel, or have a different travel authorization processes for your institution, please follow those usual procedures. The SBAG 14 meeting is in the NCTS and available for sign up. ** Early Career Travel Support: We are planning to offer limited U.S. travel support for early career scientists to participate in the SBAG 14 meeting. Interested graduate students, postdocs, and other early career scientists (within 3 years of PhD/MS/BS) should submit a letter and a CV to SBAG Early Career Secretary Angela Stickle (angela.stickle@jhuapl.edu [11]) by October 21, Included in the letter, which must not exceed 2 pages, should be a demonstration of financial need and an explanation of how the applicant s work relates to the purposes of SBAG. The letter and CV should be combined into a single PDF document for submission by attachment. Recipients of travel support will be expected to give a short presentation of their SBAG-relevant work at the SBAG 14 meeting. Please pass this opportunity on to appropriate individuals. Best wishes, Nancy Chabot SBAG Chair LPSC SPECIAL SESSION DEADLINE The 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) will be held March 21-25, 2016 at the Woodlands, Texas. You are encouraged to submit ideas and suggestions for special sessions no later than Friday, October 2, 2015 via the online submission form [12] so they can be considered, planned, and publicized. Organizers of these sessions should be prepared to serve on the Program Committee, or to have a fully empowered delegate serve on the Program Committee, if requested by the Conference Chairs. Click here to submit a suggestion for a special session [12] Page 8 of 9

9 Powered by TCPDF ( Newsletter Send submissions to: Anne Verbiscer, DPS Secretary [13]) To unsubscribe visit [14] or [15]. To change your address [16] -- Anne J. Verbiscer Research Associate Professor Department of Astronomy University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia Footer Reports Photos History Bylaws Giving Source URL: Links: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] American Astronomical Society. Page 9 of 9