Christopher Edwards is a member of the science and instrument team.

NAU planetary scientist named key partner on NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission

NASA Confirms New SIMPLEx Mission Small Satellite to Blaze Trails Studying Lunar Surface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryV0tNV51Cs&t=7543s

2do. Foro Científico sobre el Observatorio de Arecibo

Observatorio de Arecibo: El impacto cultural y científico de su colapso

with Christopher Edwards and Shaye Fordring as co-authors. Shaye is an NAU undergrad and Space Grant intern.

at the recent Apophis T-9 Years: Knowledge Opportunities for the Science of Planetary Defense meeting. Cristina Thomas was on the SOC for this meeting and was a session chair.

who has an MS from our (former) department, is now working at SOFIA as an instrument scientist.

A Single-chord Stellar Occultation by the Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object (541132) Leleākūhonua

Community Challenges in the Era of Petabyte-Scale Sky Surveys

Compositional study of trans-Neptunian objects at λ > 2.2 μm

A Deep Search for Emission From “Rock Comet” (3200) Phaethon At 1 AU

held virtually at ASU, Oct. 2-3.

Presenters included undergrad student Lonnie Dausend; grad students Amber Young and Ari Koeppel; and faculty Christopher Edwards. My apologies if I missed anyone.

“I recently gave a virtual presentation for the Saguaro Astronomy Club and the East Valley Astronomy Club (both in the Phoenix-Mesa area) titled “The Search for Planet X.” They liked it so much that I was invited to give a similar presentation for the West Valley Astronomy Club next semester.”

Stellar Occultation by the Resonant Trans-Neptunian Object (523764) 2014 WC510 Reveals a Close Binary TNO

Distinguishing multicellular life on exoplanets by testing Earth as an exoplanet

See also the NAU News article about this research: Looking to the shadows: NAU researchers turn to trees to determine if multicellular life on exoplanets exist

which talks a lot about different things going on around campus. PhD student Annika Gustafsson was specifically mentioned by name for her Amelia Earhart fellowship awarded earlier this year — one of only two students from across the
entire campus to be named in that email.

Evidence for sulfur-bearing species on Callisto’s leading hemisphere: Sourced from Jupiter’s irregular satellites or Io?

The invited review articles summarize the Spitzer Space Telescope’s contributions to Solar System science over nearly 16 years of operations. David Trilling is lead author of one of those papers and co-author on the other; Josh Emery is co-author on both.

Spitzer’s Solar System studies of comets, centaurs and Kuiper belt objects

Spitzer’s Solar System studies of asteroids, planets and the zodiacal cloud

Here is the NAU News article: NAU scientists author papers in Nature Astronomy chronicling legacy of Spitzer Space Telescope

Ground-based thermal infrared astronomy — past, present, and future.

In addition to his science talk, he gave a public lecture as part of the conference.
This is a pretty cool thing: They had nine speakers from all over the world, speaking in their own native languages (English, Hungarian, Spanish, Hindu/Urdu, Persian, German, Portuguese). You can watch Trilling’s talk here: Asteroids in the Solar System as seen by Spitzer and JWST

Samuel, a visiting PhD student from UNAM in Ensenada, Mexico, who has been working in the Trilling Research Group here for the past four years, successfully defended his PhD on October 13. Felicidades and congratulations to DOCTOR Samuel!

Latinx Heritage Month: STEMinar featuring Dr. Cristina Thomas.

entitled, How to Build a Spacecraft to Save the World

a car load (full trunk not pictured) of tents, sleeping bags, warm clothing, and health essentials. Thank you to everyone who contributed and huge thanks to Schuyler for organizing and picking up everybody’s donations. To learn more or make a monetary contribution, see Kinlani/Flagstaff Mutual Aid

at the virtual LSSTC enabling science 2020 broker workshop.

Held virtually, of course.

DPS 52 Wednesday Press Conference

See also:
NAU astronomers discover activity on distant planetary object (NAU News)
Astronomers discover activity on distant planetary object (Phys.org)

Audrey Martin put together this tremendous list of NAU people
who presented at DPS — thanks, Audrey!

Monday:
– Maggie McAdam and co-author Annika Gustafsson (Abstract #101.01)
– co-author Josh Emery (Abstract #101.03 and #106.05)
– Cristina Thomas and co-author David Trilling (Abstract #101.05)
– Patrick Tribbett and co-author Mark Loeffler (Abstract #108.04)

Tuesday:
– Ryder Strauss (Abstract #203.05)
– Maggie McAdams (Session 202 Chair)
– David Trilling and Samuel Navarro-Meza (Daily Science Chats
Facilitator/Moderator)

Wednesday:
– Will Oldroyd and co-author Chad Trujillo (Abstract #304.04)
– co-author Josh Emery (Abstract #307.05)
– co-author Cristina Thomas (Abstract #320.22)
– Will Oldroyd and Audrey Martin (Daily Science Chats Facilitator/Moderator)

Thursday:
– co-author Josh Emery (Abstract #400.04 and #400.06)
– Audrey Martin and co-authors Josh Emery and Mark Loeffler (Abstract #401.05)
– Colin Chandler and co-authors Chad Trijillo, David Trilling, and
Will Oldroyd (Abstract #404.02)
– Anna Engle and co-authors Jennifer Hanley, Will Grundy, and Stephen
Tegler (Abstract #408.02)
– Jeniffer Hanley and co-authors Anna Engle, Will Grundy, and Stephen
Tegler (Abstract #408.06)
– Annika Gustafsson and co-author Nick Moscovitz (Abstract #409.01)
– Samuel Navarro-Meza and co-authors David Trilling, and Michael
Mommert (Abstract #409.05)
– Samuel Navarro-Meza and co-author David Trilling (Abstract #410.01)
– Andy Lopez-Oquendo and co-authors David Trilling, Annika Gustafsson,
and Colin Chandler (Abstract #415.01)
– Jay Kueny with co-authors Colin Chandler, Maxime Devogele, Nick
Moskovitz (Abstract #415.02)
– Audrey Martin (Session 401 chair)
– Cristina Thomas (Session 402 chair)
– Mark Loeffler (Session 415 chair)
– Cristina Thomas and Audrey Martin (Daily Science Chats Facilitator/Moderator)

Friday:
– co-author Cristina Thomas (Abstract #502.01 and #502.06)
– Lauren McGraw with co-authors Josh Emery, and Cristina Thomas
(Abstract #509.02)
– Mark Loeffler and co-author Beau Prince (Abstract #509.04)
– Beau Prince with co-author Mark Loeffler (Abstract #509.05)

for his work in mentoring our grad students in their fellowship proposal writing. This story continues in a recent NAU News Article: Three NAU graduate students awarded NASA’s prestigious FINESST grants.

Mark Loeffler is a Co-I on a proposal recently funded by NASA Solar System Workings Program titled: Investigating the Role of Sulfides and Fe-Oxide Minerals in the Space Weathering of Asteroidal Regoliths. This work will be done in collaboration with Purdue University

of about $350k for “Census of Active Minor Planets”. This is to extract and make public all of the known asteroids in the DECam dataset and to assess their activity using Citizen Science. This will basically fund a grad student to continue PhD student, Colin Chandler’s work. Their grant proposal was one of 11 funded from 47 proposals submitted.

Ancient Martian Aeolian Sand Dune Deposits Recorded in the Stratigraphy of Valles Marineris and Implications for Past Climates

The Scientific Impact of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) for Solar System Science

Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Small Solar System Bodies

A special collection of papers just came out in JGR discussing the discovery by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission of particles being ejected from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid (and potentially hazardous asteroid) Bennu. APS Assoc. Prof. Josh Emery is co-author on 4 of the papers in the collection: Rozitis, Emery, et al. discussing the temperatures on the surface of Bennu and analyzing the possibility of volatile sublimation for driving the activity; Scheeres et al. discussing the effects of particle ejection on Bennu’s rotation and orbit, Chesley et al. discussing the trajectories of ejected particles, and McMahon et al. discussing the dynamical evolution of particles in Bennu’s micro-gravity field.

All papers are open access and available at: Special Issue: Exploration of the Activity of Asteroid (101955) Bennu

Compaction of Porous H2O Ice via Energetic Electrons

The paper shows that energetic electrons can collapse the pores in amorphous H2O ice found in the interstellar medium, suggesting that earlier estimates for this process need to be adjusted by about an order of magnitude. This implies that microporosity in many interstellar environments may be relatively rare, which could have a strong effect on the chemical evolution of interstellar ice mantles in general.

Congratulations to Brittany and to her mentor, Cristina Thomas.

entitled “Spin-rates of V-type asteroids” (Oszkiewicz et al. 2020) which was just accepted in A&A. It
should hopefully be up on arXiv soon.

NASA Science Mission Design Schools

presented his research on Constraining the Outer Solar System Perihelion Gap at the AAS DDA (Division on Dynamical Astronomy)
Virtual Conference. He had lots of enthusiastic comments and feedback on his work.

taught a 3 day course last month on Solar System Exploration for the TRiO Upward Bound Summer Residential program where at-risk high
school students from diverse backgrounds come to NAU for a taste of what college here will be like (although it was all virtual this year). “They liked my class so much that they asked me to come back and teach for them again next year and for additional related Upward Bound programs.”

Well done, Will!

having completed the The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Course in Effective Teaching Practices.

(glacial landforms) in Iceland and compare them to similar features on Mars. Christopher Edwards is a Co-I, and we are partnering with colleagues at USGS Astrogeology and NASA Johnson Space Center. They’ll be doing remote sensing, drone mapping, mineralogy, geochemistry, and sedimentology at our field site. The grant includes graduate and undergraduate student funding as well. “We’re really excited about this work! It’s a three year grant, with a total budget of $980K ($444K for NAU).”

Congratulations!

APS has more than 1100 students enrolled in classes this semester, which strikes me as a very high number, given our relatively small number of
faculty. Thanks to all who have taken on big classes this semester, and congratulations to everyone for learning new teaching skills and meeting the challenges of new ways of teaching.

for a project entitled “What are Trojan asteroids made of? Constraints from laboratory spectroscopy and mid-infrared observations”. The grant will fund Audrey Martin’s PhD project to investigate the effects of porosity and grain size on mid-infrared (5-25 micron) spectra of olivine, pyroxene, and serpentine. The results from the lab will be used to analyze Spitzer Space Telescope spectra of Trojan asteroids. Josh notes “Audrey led all aspects of the proposal effort; having a successful full NASA proposal while a PhD student a is a big accomplishment! We are all really excited about this work. This is a three year award.”

In this project she and her team will continue to work on the compositions of Titan’s lakes and seas, and this new award would have funded PhD student Anna Engle .. if Anna hadn’t just won herself a NASA fellowship. A great problem to have! Gerrick Lindberg (affiliate faculty in our department), Will Grundy (adjunct in our department), and Steve Tegler are also on this proposal.

In total, only 43 SSW proposals were selected in this round, and three of them (7% of all awards in this NASA program) would have funded NAU people (counting the Jennifer/Anna award in this list).

Even in unusual circumstances, NAU students win record number of national awards, scholarships in 2019-20 academic year

This is a $100,000 award for Cristina to keep doing the excellent work she is already doing!

Beau in an undergraduate student, and researcher in the Loeffler lab. Beau also, this year, won a Goldwater Scholarship.

Evidence for ammonia-bearing species on the Uranian satellite Ariel supports recent geologic activity.

Her dissertation included work on comets, CO and CH3OH in molecular clouds, and some preparatory work for JWST. Laurie was David Trilling’s very first ever research student at NAU!

A possible explanation for the presence of crystalline H2O-ice on Kuiper Belt objects, published in Icarus.
Here they performed a detailed study on the amorphization of crystalline H2O-ice and show that although under the conditions of KBOs, energetic electrons can amorphize H2O-ice, the time needed to do this is on the order of the age of the solar system, suggesting that the presence of H2O-ice on KBOs should expected after all.

After many years of hard work and lots of blood, toil, tears, and sweat, the Emirates Mars Mission is scheduled. Christopher Edwards is the Instrument Scientist for EMIRS, the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer.

NAU and ASU have press releases out:

NAU planetary scientist collaborates on first-ever Mars mission launched by Arab world

Emirates Mars Mission to launch with ASU-designed instrument

The Science Case for Spacecraft Exploration of the Uranian Satellites

She reports:
“I work at the hangar at Pad 39A with the Final Integrations/Pre-Launch team. I have a couple of projects I work on; one where I am working with an actual engine to test how easily contamination can occur, and one where I am building (from scratch!) an electrical component that will connect to the rocket and be incorporated into our pre-flight
checkouts. I’ve gotten to work hands on with a bunch of the rockets that we’ve launched and I’ll be working on Crew-1 here starting in the next month, which is super exciting!”

was a co-author on the conference report titled Mars Extant Life: What’s Next? published in Astrobiology. The report summarizes the conference, which brought together a community of publishing experts to discuss habitability and astrobiology related to Mars. Topics included indigenous microbial life, martian extant life and identifying and exploring refugia.

Space Weathering of FeS Induced via Pulsed Laser Irradiation along with Mark Loeffler.

in support of the upcoming NASA DART mission: Didymos Observers Workshop 2020

together with some folks we know well from Lowell and several REU alumni, have a new paper out: Stratification Dynamics of Titan’s Lakes via Methane Evaporation

for the recent LSST Solar System Science Collaboration Readiness Sprint #3

Titan in Transit: Ultraviolet Occultation Observations Reveal a Complex Atmospheric Structure

Ryleigh successfully defended her master’s thesis (in Applied Physics) titled “Low Energy Electron Sputtering of Water Ice”, under the supervision of Mark Loeffler. She will be continuing her education this fall at California Institute of Technology, where she will be pursuing a PhD in planetary science with Mike Brown.

Mitch was recently awarded the Dean’s Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Kansas, where he will be pursing a PhD beginning this fall. This is a highly competitive 5-year award that only a handful students across campus receive. He is planning on pursing research in high energy physics, which involves him performing field work in Antarctica for part of his PhD.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, it’s been quite a year for students in Mark Loeffler’s lab. Ryleigh and Mitch are above;
as previously reported, Beau Prince won a Goldwater Scholarship and Patrick Tribbett got Honorable Mention for his NSF GRFP.

Here’s a message from the CEFNS’ Dean’s Office:

“Congratulations, Hannah! It is with great pleasure that the College of the Environment, Forestry and Natural Sciences has awarded your 2020 University Virtual Symposium poster, “Investigating Potential Ancient Inverted Valley Networks on Mars”, the First Place Award for the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science.”

— including alumna of our department Cassandra Lejoly — are on two recent papers with Michael Mommert:

Recurrent Cometary Activity in Near-Earth Object (3552) Don Quixote

Systematic Characterization of and Search for Activity in Potentially Active Asteroids

Near-infrared observations of active asteroid (3200) Phaethon reveal no evidence for hydration

Josh, congratulations, and thank you for taking this on.

presenting some of his EXPRES work: Performance Verification of the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph. EXPRES is an instrument on the LDT (Lowell Discovery Telescope.

investigating space weathering effects on the Murchison meteorite. The Murchison meteorite is thought to be a reasonable analog for asteroid 101955 Bennu, which is the asteroid currently being investigated by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission: The effect of progressive space weathering on the organic and inorganic components of a carbonaceous chondrite.

would have been held in March, and we would have had a long list of presentes: Faculty: Nadine Barlow, Mark Salvatore; Postdocs: Jennifer Buz, Cong Pan, Kathryn Powell; Grad students: Ari Koeppel, Tony Maue, Lori Pigue, Christian Tai Udovicic, Aaron Weintraub, Chris Wolfe, Michael Zeilnhofer; Undergrads: Mitch Magnuson, Tabatha Trigler.

who was just notified that she has been awarded the Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship for 2020-2021. “The Amelia Earhart Fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of famed pilot and Zontian, Amelia Earhart. The US$10,000 Fellowship is awarded annually to up to 30 women pursuing Ph.D./doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences.” This is not just 30 women in the US — it’s an international award. Last year only a few of the recipients were US based.

who successfully defended his dissertation entitled, A Global Analysis of Impact Craters on Ceres, and became our department’s first ever PhD graduate! Congratulation also to his mentor, Nadine Barlow.

Planets2020: Ground and space observatories: a joint venture to planetary science meeting in Santiago, Chile.

an intensive week-long school in France to study clouds in planets in our Solar System and other planetary systems ( Cloud Academy II ).

Alas, the school/academy was canceled.

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, in April. She (and Mark, who currently works for Christopher Edwards, and Phee, who mostly chews on things and drools), will be moving to Mountain View in April. Best of luck to all of them in their next phase!

at Lowell Observatory. Congratulations to all NAU undergraduates, grad students, postdocs, and faculty on giving terrific talks! The next symposium will be Wed., Sept. 2, 2020.

Cometary Activity Discovered on a Distant Centaur: A Non-Aqueous Sublimation Mechanism

Dean Wilder has just announced that Lisa is this year’s CEFNS Distinguished Professor (aka, Teacher of the Year).

Congratulations Lisa–well deserved recognition! We will definitely do something to celebrate as a group when we can all be together again. Also, many thanks to all who helped to put her nomination packet together.

Congratulations to Schuyler Borges (second year PhD student) and Jay Kueny (post-bac researcher) both won! And also to second
year PhD student Patrick Tribbett, who won an honorable mention!

one of the top national fellowships for undergrads in STEM!

effective August, 2020!

NAU researchers develop new way to protect Grand Canyon water

The geology and geophysics of Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth

The solar nebula origin of (486958) Arrokoth, a primordial contact binary in the Kuiper Belt

Color, composition, and thermal environment of Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth

Grundy is first author of the last of these; David Trilling is near the end of the author list on the first of these.

Desert Attunement Symposium

led a workshop on how to prepare proposals for the James Webb Space Telescope. Lauren and Audrey are part of the “JWST Master Class,” which takes a “train the trainers” approach to helping people develop the skills and experience to write proposals.

This conference celebrated the end of the Spitzer mission after 17 years. Trilling reported on observations of 2000+ near Earth asteroids, taken with 3000+ hours of observing time over 12 years (2008-2020).

• Feb. 15: Nadine Barlow, Mark Loeffler, Jennifer Buz, and Will Grundy gave a tour of the Department and PEAXS, Astrophysical Ice, and Mars Rover Operations labs to 55 visitors as part of the VIP Pluto Experience of the I Heart Pluto Festival.
• Feb 15: Nadine Barlow gave the NAU welcome at the Pluto’s 90th Anniversary Celebration event at the Cline Library Assembly Hall.
• Feb. 18: Steve Tegler spoke about the Ice Lab activities at the Pluto Discovery Day event at the Orpheum Theater.

Investigating Taxonomic Diversity within Asteroid Families through ATLAS Dual-Band Photometry.

Authors include James Windsor, Tyler Robinson, and David Trilling: Distinguishing multicellular life on exoplanets by testing Earth as an exoplanet.

The AAS Fellows program was established in 2019 to confer recognition upon AAS members for achievement and extraordinary service to the field of astronomy and the American Astronomical Society. AAS Fellows are recognized for their contributions toward the AAS mission of enhancing and sharing humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe.

AAS Fellows

Testing Densities and Refractive Indices of Extraterrestrial Ice Components Using Molecular Structures—Organic Compounds and Molar Refractions

NAU Scientists Map Hidden Water Ice On Mars

David Trilling’s NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) proposal was funded, renewing this project for another three years. This project began at NAU in 1991, so this renewal runs through the 31st year of the program, which I think makes it the longest continually operational REU program in astronomy (and perhaps any field?). Kathy Eastwood ran this program at NAU for many many years and David says these are really big shoes to fill. We’ll have ten summer undergraduate interns on campus for each of the 2020, 2021, and 2022 summers.

with the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) was approved. SOFIA is a 747 with a hole in the side of it.

• Cristina Thomas had two undergraduates (Brittany Harvison and Jacob Hyden) present posters on the Agnia and Massalia asteroid families.
• Within Ty Robinson’s HABLab, Amber Young presented a poster on her ongoing work related to the available atmospheric Gibbs free energy as a biosignature. Will Oldroyd had an oral presentation on his work to design a technique to efficiently schedule observations for the astrometric determination of orbits for directly imaged exoplanets. Ty Robinson had three talks: two presentations on HabEx and one on ongoing work (in general) within the HABLab.
• Phd students Erin Aadland and Catherine Clark and undergraduate student Cody Huls all gave presentations at the meeting.

under a call focused on signatures of life in the Universe. This selection comes with travel support to attend Scialog events where interdisciplinary research teams are assembled and can compete for special funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Scialog is here.

was accepted. She will observe main belt P and D type asteroids. SOFIA is a 747 with a hole in the side of it.

There were only 9 proposals selected this year, and two of them were from NAU! Together the proposals total more than $1M, and each project will run for three years.