12.24.2011

Funding opportunities for space science conferences!


Undergraduate Planetary Science Research Conference

Sunday, March 18th, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Town Hall Exhibit Center (The Woodlands, TX)

As part of the NASA SMD Year of the Solar System (YSS), an Undergraduate Planetary Science Research Conference is being hosted in conjunction with the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

The Undergraduate Planetary Science Research Conference includes:
  • Panels on “How to Choose the Grad School Right for You,” “Alternative Careers in Science,” and “Women in Planetary Science”
  • Poster sessions where students will present their posters to other student and to the scientific community
  • “Meeting Mentors,” which will pair students with a scientist for part of the LPSC meeting, so students can learn how to engage at a scientific conference
  • Opportunities to meet other undergraduate researchers, graduate students, and scientists
  • Undergraduate students currently conducting research in planetary sciences, astrobiology, and lunar sciences are eligible. To apply, please go to https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meeting_portal/iofi/index.cfm?mtg=yssurc2012/CORRECT LINK: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meeting_portal/iofi/index.cfm?mtg=yssurc2012
Applications are due by close of business February 10, 2012.

Some travel support will be available to students who qualify. Priority will be given to students of diverse backgrounds. Students are encouraged to attend LPSC and the travel support includes registration for and participation in LPSC. For additional information, please contact Dr. Emily CoBabe-Ammann ecobabe@spaceeducation.org.


I'll be submitting an abstract and I encourage anyone who is interested to submit/attend. Conferences are great ways to get to know people in fields you are interested in and see lots of new, interesting research. 

-T

11.18.2011

POSSE field trip, meteor showers, Europa and much, much more.

So our last meeting of the year is coming up on December 1st. Depending on how things pan out we might either have a speaker or just meet so that people can turn in badge forms for the field trip if they haven't gotten around to it by then. Who knows, we might even put a movie on.

For those you of you who might be viewing this and not aware of our Spring trip, POSSE is going to visit NASA sometime in February. We'll be getting a behind the scenes look at what goes on at the headquarters of a national space program and looking at lunar rocks; we might even get to touch 'em.  
A couple of fun things to look at:


Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.


The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

You might also want to make note of the 13th/14th of December as the Geminids are coming, oh God. No, you don't need to grab your tin foil hats, they aren't here to steal your thoughts.

The Geminids are a meteor shower which peaks annually around December 13th/14th. Rates this year are predicted to be as high as 100 meteors per hour, so bust out your sleeping bags and get away from the city lights if you want to see them all.

Upcoming talks: 

Tuesday, November 22nd from 12:30-1:30pm in JGB 3.222
  •  Dr. Jack Holt will be giving a talk titled "A New View of Ice on Mars:  Viscous Fluid, Sedimentary Rock, and Paleoclimate Record"

Wednesday, November 23rd from 12-1pm in JGB 3.222
  •  iPGST (informal Petrology, Geochemistry, Structure and Tectonics talks) will be hosting a speaker who I believe will be talking about something related to Mars. I'll update this when I get more information.
  • UPDATE: 
    Speaker: Romy Hanna
    Title: Using thermal infared (TIR) spectroscopy to determine the mineralogy and geologic setting of intracrater materials in Amazonis Planitia, Mars
Lastly (but certainly not least):

A paper by UT postdoc Britney Schmidt co-authored by Senior Research Scientist Don Blankenship was published in Nature on the 16th. The paper, titled "Active formation of 'chaos terrain' over shallow subsurface water on Europa", presents evidence for sub-surface "lakes" on Jupiter's moon.

Read more about the paper here.

Britney Schmidt
Don Blankenship