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General Meeting – July 2019
July 5, 2019 @ 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
NOTICE – NEW SUMMER LOCATION!
6:30 pm – Introductory Presentation
Title: Seasonal Night Sky Objects
Speaker: Mary Turner, PhD
Mary Turner, TAAA’s appointed Chief Observer, takes us on a tour of the summer night sky. As usual in her popular talks, Mary’s use of astronomical data, images, and mythology brings the seasonal changes in the sky to life.
7:30 pm – Main Presentation
Title: From Stars to the Laboratory: Stardust in the Solar System
Speaker: Pierre Haenecour, currently a Postdoctoral research associate, will join the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Fall ‘19 as an Assistant Professor. Pierre holds a B.S. and M.S. degree in Geochemistry from the Free University of Brussels (Belgium, 2010) and obtained a Ph.D. degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University (St. Louis, 2016). His research background is in geochemistry and cosmochemistry, with his main focus being the building blocks and early history of the Solar System and the origin of life.
About 4.6 billion years ago, our Solar System formed from the collapse of a large molecular cloud composed of interstellar gas, ice, and dust. Although most of the original dust grains were destroyed during the Solar System’s early formation, a small portion remained intact inside asteroids and comets, and can be found today on Earth in some meteorite samples. These tiny pre-solar grains or stardust, formed in the ‘envelopes’ around stars or in material ejected by certain stellar explosions before the Solar System formed, are the only remnants of its original building blocks. Pierre will talk about pre-solar grains and present a case study on how coordinated laboratory analysis of these specks of dust provide constraints on their parent stars and formation histories.
Meeting Location
More About Location: This building is one block West of Steward Observatory. Go to West side of the round Observatory at Steward. Face West. You will be looking across a green mall area. The building on the West (direction you are facing) side of that green area is Modern Languages. It is a long building. Cross the green mall and proceed toward the South.