The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their April meeting in the Cochise College Library (Library Commons) on the Sierra Vista Campus on Friday, April 15th, 2016 at 7PM. The meeting is FREE and open to the public.
Our speaker will be Sarah Morrison, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona. Her talk is titled “Outer Planets: The New Frontier of Exoplanets
Abstract:
Within the last 10 years, we now have much more context for our Solar System with the discovery and characterization of thousands of exoplanet systems. To date, however, most of these systems provide insight mainly for the inner planets since they sample planets that orbit close to their host stars. I will discuss cutting-edge efforts to start looking for outer exoplanets using direct imaging campaigns, as well as through indirect evidence in debris disks and current transit/radial velocity surveys and what these findings mean for our understanding of our own Solar System.
Biography:
Sarah Morrison is a PhD candidate in Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory studying the evolution of planetary systems using orbital dynamics. She received her B.A. in Astronomy from Cornell University calibrating cameras on the Mars Exploration Rovers and exploring the moons of Saturn with the Cassini mission. She currently enjoys observing the often clear Southwestern skies while pondering perplexing planetary puzzles.