Dear meteorite-list members within driving distance of Tucson,
This lecture is well worth the drive and it is free! Brother Guy
always gives interesting and entertaining talks!
Regards to all,
Dolores Hill
Richard Kowalski wrote:
Subject: LPL50 Anniversary Alumnus Lecture
Tuesday, 24 Aug 2010
7:00 pm — 8:00 pm
Kuiper Space Sciences, 1629 E. University Blvd., Room 308
From Hawthorne House to the Papal Palace: Adventures of a Vatican Planetary
Scientist
Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ (LPL Ph.D. 1978) has worked as a planetary
astronomer on every continent, from teaching at the University of Nairobi to
collecting meteorites in Antarctica. For this lecture, he'll share some of his
adventures along the way, including how he helped write the first graduate
student plays (and set up the grad student residence Hawthorne House),
information about his space club at the Starehe Boys' Centre in Kenya, and
tales of his intimate dealings with aliens (well, alien rocks, at least) in the
bowels of the Vatican.
Dr. Consolmagno is curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel
Gandolfo. His research explores the connections between meteorites and
asteroids,
and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system.
After obtaining his Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from the University of Arizona
in 1978, Brother Consolmagno worked as a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at
the Harvard College Observatory, and from 1980-1983 continued as postdoc and
lecturer at MIT. In 1983 he left MIT to join the US Peace Corps, where he
served for two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. Upon his return
to the US in 1985 he became an assistant professor of physics at Lafayette
College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he taught until his entry into the
Jesuit order in 1989. He took vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991, and
studied philosophy and theology at Loyola University, Chicago, and physics at
the University of Chicago, before his assignment to the Vatican Observatory in
1993.
Dr. Consolmagno studies the nature and evolution of small bodies in the solar
system. His work in the 1970s on the moons of the
outer solar system predicted many of the features later discovered by the
Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, including the first published suggestion of
Europan sub-crustal oceans with the possibility of life. Models for the
geochemical evolution of lunar basalts and basaltic meteorites eventually led to
the identification, on geochemical grounds, of asteroid Vesta as the parent
body of the eucrite, diogenite, and howardite meteorites. His doctoral thesis
on the role of electromagnetic forces in chemical fractionations of the early
solar system pioneered the field of gravito-electrodynamics, the
behavior of dust subjected to both gravitational and electromagnetic forces,
and he was the first person to apply this concept to describe the dynamics of
Jupiter's dust ring. Dr. Consolmagno's present research is centered on
understanding the origin of moons, meteorites, asteroids, dwarf planets, and
trans-Neptunian objects. One continuing project is measuring the density,
porosity, and magnetic properties of meteorites, with
applications to understanding the lithification of meteorites and the structure
of their asteroidal parent bodies. He is also involved in
telescope observations measuring the spectra of small bodies in the outer solar
system.
Brother Consolmagno has authored/coauthored several books, including: Turn Left
at Orion (with Dan M. Davis; Cambridge University Press, 1989);
Worlds Apart (with Martha W. Schaefer; Prentice Hall, 1993); The Way to the
Dwelling of Light (U of Notre Dame Press, 1998);
Brother Astronomer (McGraw Hill, 2000); God's Mechanics (Jossey-Bass, 2007),
and The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican (VO Publications, 2009).
This talk is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 pm.
For additional information visit http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/outreach/
The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
Fifty years of Excellence in Research, Education, and Discovery: 1960-2010
--
Richard Kowalski
Full Moon Photography
IMCA #1081
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