LAS Meeting – Sept 17, 2026

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Jupiter’s Four Galilean Moons

After changing our view of the cosmos with Galileo’s discovery in 1610, the four large moons of Jupiter – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – have been challenging our scientific understanding of planetary bodies every since. Fran will present our current understanding of the workings of these four very different objects and outline the plans for their future exploration, including NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and ESA’s JUICE mission.

Fran Bagenal Biography:

Dr. Fran Bagenal is a research scientist and professor emerita at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is co-investigator on NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Juno mission to Jupiter. Her main area of expertise is the study of charged particles trapped in planetary magnetic fields and the interaction of plasmas with the atmospheres of planetary objects, particularly in the outer solar system. 

Born and raised in the UK, Dr. Bagenal received her bachelor degree  from the University of Lancaster, England, and her doctorate degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT (Cambridge, Mass) in 1981. She has participated in several of NASA’s planetary exploration missions, including Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons and Juno.

https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/mop/home/people/fran_bagenal

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3293128/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

The meeting will be at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 803 Third Avenue, Longmont, CO 80501. The meeting starts at 7 pm.

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