Monthly Meeting

Star-Struck:  Space Weather for Humans and Technology

Professor Delores J. Knipp

Thursday, November 18    7:00    via Zoom only

The visual manifestations of extreme space weather are terrifying and awe-inspiring: Blood-red aurora filling the skies, and in the days of the telegraph, sparks flying from terminals. The non-visual impacts of space weather in today’s technology-driven world can be pervasive, especially for spacecraft and any system relying on precise position, navigation, and timing. This presentation will touch on the “best of the worst” space weather storms, including an event in 1967 that nearly triggered World War III and the little-discussed storm of December 2006 that shut down the GPS system on the Sun-facing side of Earth.

Professor Delores Knipp is a Research Professor at the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder).  She earned a Ph D in Atmospheric and Space Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1989. Her career spans more than 30 years as an active-duty Air Force Officer and civilian professor at the US Air Force Academy where she taught physics, meteorology and astronomy, followed by more than a decade at CU Boulder. During that time, she wrote the first space weather textbook for upper division undergraduates entitled ‘Understanding Space Weather and the Physics Behind It.’  From 2014-2019 Professor Knipp was the Editor in Chief for the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Space Weather Journal.

Prof. Knipp’s research focuses on the space environment and the atmospheric and solar events that disturb it. She works with students to investigate methods for: 1) specifying satellite drag; 2) describing how structures on the Sun produce disturbances in near-Earth space; 3) improving scientific use of space environment measurements from DoD, NASA and international space missions; 4) inter-comparing measurements from research and commercial satellites with an eye toward making broader use of commercial satellite 'housekeeping' data to monitor environmental conditions in near-Earth space; 5) describing the effects of extreme space weather at Earth: and 6) developing educational material related to space weather.  She also studies historical space weather events to understand the impacts these events have had on society and the US military.

In 2019 she joined the ranks of Fellows at the American Meteorological Society.  Later that year she was awarded the 2019 International Marcel Nicolet Medal for Space Weather and Space Climate.

Animations by a former NASA planetary scientist offer brief, interesting videos on how our solar system works

James O’Donoghue, an astronomer with Japan’s space agency, makes video animations of the physics of the solar system. According to an article in Business Insider, he has won the Europlanet Society’s Prize for Public Engagement. Some of his most popular works illustrate how the planets spin, the true center of the solar system, and how long it takes light to reach the Earth from the Sun. The BI article features several of his videos; the entire collection can be seen on his YouTube channel.

Rabbit Mountain Star Party Report

LAS member Sarah Getty put together a collage of images from the night - Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons, Saturn, and Venus from afar.

Last Friday’s Star Party at Rabbit Mountain was a success! The evening began as usual, with a presentation by Boulder County Open Space. This time the presenters divulged an array of interesting facts about the two biggest planets in the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn.

5 or 6 LAS members brought their telescopes to show the night sky to around 40 guests, all of whom were very excited and appreciative. After views of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn were seen,  guests were treated to more deep sky objects. LAS member Bill Tschumy, for example, sighted in on M11 (Wild Duck Cluster), M13 (Great Hercules Cluster), M57 (Ring Nebula), Albireo (Double Star), and M31 (Andromeda Galaxy).  He used SkySafari and the Our Galaxy app to supplement what they were seeing in the scopes.