Live Faculty Talks

PAST TALK - Galilean Moons: Past, Present & Future on April 6 & 7 at 7pm

In 1610 four objects were observed to orbit Jupiter. These were subsequently associated with Galileo Gallileo, named Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and provided evidence against an Earth-centered view of the universe. Following spacecraft visits by Voyager, Galileo, Cassini and Juno spacecraft, each moon shows unique, outstanding characteristics: Io is the most volcanic object in the solar system, Europa is the most likely object to host extra-terrestrial life, Ganymede is the only moon with a magnetic dynamo, and Callisto is an icy moon covered in impact craters. This talk will summarize the history of exploration of these Galilean moons and describe plans for future exploration.

Bio: Dr. Fran Bagenal was born and grew up in England. She studied Physics and Geophysics at the University of Lancaster. In 1976, inspired by NASA’s missions to Mars and the prospect of the Voyager mission, she moved 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 2015 she stopped teaching in order to have time to focus on Pluto and Jupiter.

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: the New Horizons mission that – after a 9.5-year flight – flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 and Juno that went into orbit over the poles of Jupiter in 2016.

PAST TALK - JWST and the Habitability of Other Worlds on March 9 & 10 at 7pm

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched into space in December of 2021 and started sending its first images back to Earth in July of 2022. The science campaign began in earnest last fall and we were treated to an entirely new look at our Universe. In particular, JWST took the first spectra of the atmosphere of exoplanets - planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. For the first time, we  were able to characterize the conditions on these planets and consider whether any of them might host life. In this talk, Dr. Meredith MacGregor will discuss this revolutionary new telescope, what makes it unique, and what we might hope to find when we use it to look at other worlds.

Bio: Dr. Meredith MacGregor is an assistant professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research group uses multi-wavelength astronomical observations to explore the formation and habitability of planetary systems, and is planning to use JWST to connect the composition of planet-forming disks to exoplanet atmospheres. Her work has been widely covered in the popular press including Scientific American, Science News, and National Geographic. She is a Scialog Fellow and the Co-Chair of the NASA Infrared Science Interest Group.  Previously, she was a NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Earth & Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C. after completing her Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2017.
 

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