Monday morning
Portland
54
Session AK: Frontiers in Astronomy
and Space Science
Location: Pavilion East
Sponsor: Committee on Space Science and Astronomy
Date: Monday, July 15
Time: 8–10 a.m.
Presider: Jeannette Lawler
AK01:
8-8:30 a.m. Engaging Undergrads in Meaningful
Scientific Research with Small Telescopes
Invited – Denise C. Stephens, Brigham Young University, Department of
Physics and Astronomy, Provo, UT 84602;
Eric Hintz, Brigham Young University
For the past several years we have been using a small 16-in telescope
and a 0.9-m telescope to give our undergraduate physics and astronomy
majors an opportunity to do meaningful scientific research that can lead to
publication. These students have been able to operate both of the telescopes
and collect their own data, and then have developed techniques to quickly
reduce the data in order to analyze and study what they have found. With
these telescopes we have followed up possible transiting planets, eclipsing
binaries, and variable stars. I will discuss in more detail how we find our
targets, work with the students to teach them data reduction, the analysis
tools we use, and how easily this type of research can be implemented at
any high school, college, or university with a small telescope and CCD
camera.
AK02:
8:30-9 a.m. Searching for Earth’s Twin: NASA’s
Kepler Mission*
Invited – Edna DeVore, SETI Institute,189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100, Moun-
tain View, CA 94043;
Is Earth unique in the universe? Are Earth-size planets rare? Learn about
NASA’s Kepler Mission, which seeks to answer these questions by searching
for exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone of Sun-size stars. Launched
in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft is a specialized telescope that acts like a
very precise light meter, a photometer, that precisely measures changes in
stars’ brightnesses as planets transit. To date, Kepler has identified more
than 2700 candidate planets, with many small, Earth-size planets included.
Kepler will continue to observe through 2016, and is closing in on Earth’s
twin.
*Talk will be presented by Gary Nakagiri, SETI/Kepler EPO Specialist
AK03:
9-9:30 a.m. The Effect of Host Star Spectral Energy
Distribution and Ice-Albedo Feedback on the Climate of
Extrasolar Planets*
Invited – Aomawa L. Shields, University of Washington, Box 351580, Seattle,
WA 98195-1580;
Victoria S. Meadows, Cecilia M. Bitz, Tyler D. Robinson, University of
Washington
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, University of Chicago
Manoj M. Joshi, University of East Anglia
When exploring the effect of ice-albedo feedback on planetary climate,
most often what is considered is the interaction between ice and our own
host star, the Sun. However, ice albedo has a spectral dependence, so the
ice-albedo feedback mechanism on a planet is sensitive to the wavelength
of light coming from its host star. We have explored this effect using a
hierarchy of models. We find that terrestrial planets orbiting stars with
higher near-UV radiation exhibit a stronger ice-albedo feedback. At a fixed
level of CO
2
, M-dwarf planets remain free of global ice cover with larger
decreases in stellar flux than planets orbiting hotter, brighter stars. At the
outer edge of the habitable zone, where CO
2
is expected to increase, the
spectral dependence of surface ice and snow albedo is less important, and
does not extend the traditional outer edge of the habitable zone given by
the maximum CO
2
greenhouse.
*This material is based upon work supported by a National Science Foundation Grad-
uate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-0718124. This work was performed
as part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Lead Team,
supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the NASA
Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement solicitation NNH05ZDA001C.
AK04:
9:30-10 a.m. Zooniverse: Cutting-Edge Research Your
Students Can Participate In
Invited – Laura Whyte, Adler Planetarium, 1300 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago,
IL 60616; laura@zooniverse
The Zooniverse (zooniverse.org) is a collection of research projects
that rely on public participation to succeed. Since it began in 2007 with
galaxyzoo.org an army of 800,000 citizen scientists have classified galaxies,
analyzed light curves to detect exo-planet transits, marked features on the
Moon and Mars, and looked for star clusters in Andromeda. Please join Dr.
Laura Whyte, an astronomer and educator from the Adler Planetarium,
to hear about the cutting-edge research that is being done by the science
teams in collaboration with the participants, and to learn about new
resources that are being developed to support the use of these projects in
the classroom, to give your students the opportunity to become citizen
scientists and make a contribution to research.
New
TPT
Editor Appointed
AAPT has announced the appoint-
ment of Gary Dane White as the
new editor for
The Physics Teacher
(
TPT
). White, currently on leave
from the American Institute of
Physics as a program director at
the National Science Foundation,
will start as the new
TPT
editor on
August 1, 2013.
White received his BS in physics from Northeast Louisiana
University in 1982, and his PhD in nuclear theory at Texas
A & M University in 1986. After a short stint at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, he returned to his home state, devel-
oping research interests in ion beam physics and pedagogy.
In addition to teaching physics and astronomy for over
a decade at Northwestern State University of Louisiana
(NSU), being awarded Outstanding Teacher by the NSU
Alumni Association in 1996, he taught the mathematics se-
quence for engineers at TAMU and, most recently, physics
for non-science majors at The George Washington Univer-
sity. White served as the Director of the Society of Physics
Students (SPS) and Sigma Pi Sigma at AIP from 2001-2012.
Gary D. White
