LECTURES

We will discuss several current and upcoming NASA missions: SDO, Parker, MUSE and HelioSwarm. We will highlight several outstanding science questions, the contributions made by the current missions and the expectations for the future missions. 

NSF & NASA eclipse expeditions, recent results and current projects. This talk will introduce several recent eclipse science expeditions, their goals accomplishments and plans for the 2024 eclipse. We will look at the question - What can be accomplished in 5-10 mins of eclipse observations that can't be done from the existing set of ground based and space based telescopes. Particular emphasis will be placed on AIR-Spec, ASPIRE and ACES NSF airborne projects that the presenter has worked on.

Just in the last 30 years, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets, that is, planets that orbit other stars. Many of these exoplanets have been discovered by NASA telescopes that look for the transit of the planet, where the planet passes right in front of its host star, with much the same configuration as a solar eclipse. I will present the latest status of our understanding of these other worlds and discuss my own research that utilizes this special geometry to learn about the atmospheres of these planets, explore rocky worlds like our Earth, and consider the search for life elsewhere in our Universe.