Past Science Seminars
January 16, 2025
Earth-Based Transmitters Trigger Precipitation of Inner Radiation Belt Electrons: Unveiling Observations and Modeling Results
Zheng Xiang
(LASP)
Human activity influences Earth’s environment, including the space environment hundreds to thousands of kilometers above the Earth. One direct evidence is that the 19.8 kHz electromagnetic signals launched by the North West Cape (NWC) transmitter station...
December 5, 2024
The Role of the Polar Vortex in Sun-Earth Coupling
Lynn Harvey
(LASP)
In the polar regions, the wintertime polar vortices play a critical role in both “bottom-up” atmospheric coupling via its modulation of planetary and gravity waves as well as “top-down” coupling via the transport of nitrogen oxides...
November 21, 2024
Solar wind-magnetosphere coupling and planetary ion escape in Mercury’s magnetosphere
Weijie Sun
(Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley)
Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, which possesses a global intrinsic magnetic field that interacts with the solar wind to form a small magnetosphere. Unlike other planets in the solar system, Mercury lacks a...
November 7, 2024
The importance of boundaries - large-scale solar wind-magnetosphere coupling
Brian Walsh
(Boston University)
The dynamics inside planetary magnetosphere’s are driven, in most cases, by coupling between a planetary environment and a stellar wind. At Earth, solar wind-magnetosphere coupling has been the focus of study for decades. Although recent space...
October 24, 2024
Old and New – Solar Coronal CubeSat Missions at LASP
Bennet Schwab
(LASP)
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is the only academic institution with a 100% mission success return on their CubeSats. Science missions directed at studying the solar corona have been a large majority of...
October 10, 2024
Multi-wavelength monitoring of space weather from young, solar-type stars
Ivey Davis
(Caltech)
Space weather involves studying both the radiation from events like flares as well as the particles accelerated in the form of stellar energetic particle (SEP) events and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Each of these components is...
October 3, 2024
Impact of Assimilating Ionosphere and Thermosphere Observations in a Whole Atmosphere Model
Nicholas Pedatella
(NCAR / HAO)
Though widely used in the lower atmosphere for both operational and scientific purposes, data assimilation techniques have yet to be extensively adopted in the mesosphere, thermosphere, and ionosphere. This is despite the inherent benefits obtained by...
September 19, 2024
The LAPYUTA mission: Life-environmentology, Astronomy, and PlanetarY Ultraviolet Telescope Assembly
Fuminori Tsuchiya
(Tohoku University)
Ultraviolet spectroscopy is one of the most powerful tools to cover a wide range of scientific fields, from planetary science to astronomy. We will introduce a future UV space telescope, LAPYUTA which is selected as a...
September 12, 2024
Detectability and chemistry of hydrocarbons in interstellar and planetary environments
Jordy Bouwman
(LASP, CU)
Hydrocarbons of all sorts and sizes are found throughout the various stages of star and planet formation. For example, from infrared spectroscopic observations we have learned that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous in space. The...
September 5, 2024
The Net Radiative Effect of the “Clear-Sky” Near Clouds
Eshkol Eytan
(NOAA)
Clouds strongly modulate the radiative transfer in the atmosphere by inducing large deviations from clear-sky fluxes. This implies that the radiative effect of clouds (CRE) on their surroundings, even if small relative to CRE, will be large compared to clear-sky...
August 7, 2024
Chasing the eclipse 2024: extending totality via coordinated observations from ground and air
Amir Caspi
(Southwest Research Institute)
Total solar eclipses are spectacular astronomical phenomena that allow unique studies of the solar corona. While observing windows at fixed sites are only a few minutes long, “chasing” the Moon’s shadow enables longer observing periods, enhancing...
August 29, 2024
The Enceladus-Exoplanet Connection: How Molecular Hydrogen on Ocean Worlds Could Support Life
Christopher Glein
(Southwest Research Institute)
Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean that erupts into space, forming a plume. We sampled the plume using the Cassini spacecraft and found that it contains materials that can fuel methane formation, namely CO2 and H2....
August 15, 2024
XUV-Driven Mass Loss from Hot Saturns
Daniel Thorngreen
(Johns Hopkins University)
It is now well-established that mass loss processes play an important role in sculpting the population of Neptunes and sub-Neptunes. For higher-mass planets, while XUV-driven mass loss has been both theoretically predicted and observed, it has...
May 30, 2024
Observations of Massive Coronal Mass Ejections from Young Sun-like Stars: Insights into How the Young Sun Affected the Early Earth
Kosuke Namekata
(Kyoto University/NAOJ)
Abstract: Young Sun-like stars frequently produce “superflares”, serving as models for the young Sun-Earth environment. Large solar flares are closely linked to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with filament/prominence eruptions, but its evidence for stellar superflares...
May 23, 2024
Nanodust and Enceladus and Saturn’s Rings, oh my! - Probing Saturn’s ring-moon system with nanodust.
Sean Hsu
(LASP, CU)
After exploring the Saturn system for more than 13 years, September 15th, 2017 marked the end of the NASA-ESA joint Cassini-Huygens mission. Before diving into and becoming a part of Saturn, the spacecraft witnessed a once-in-decades...
May 16, 2024
A Tale of Planetary Adolescence and Evolution
Adina Feinstein
(LASP)
Within the past decade, we have discovered only a dozen young (< 300 Myr) short-period exoplanets, compared to ~5,600 mature exoplanets. The radii of these young planets are larger than older planets on similar orbital periods....
May 2, 2024
Improving Whole Atmospheric Reanalysis by Assimilating GOLD Observations in WACCMX
Fazlul Laskar
(LASP)
Remember the saying “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Well, some of the useful models can be made realistic by ingesting experimental measurements through data assimilation. This presentation will show examples of how Global...
April 25, 2024
Understanding and Modeling the Mysterious Dropout of Radiation Belt Electrons
Weichao Tu
(West Virginia University)
The discovery of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts in 1958 revealed the hazardous radiative environment for spacecraft operating within. Understanding, modeling, and eventually predicting the dynamics of energetic electrons in the radiation belts have long been...
April 11, 2024
The Habitable Worlds Observatory: Mission Overview and the Path to Discovery
Kevin France
(LASP)
The discovery of thousands of planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system has fundamentally shifted our view of Earth’s place in the Universe, has captivated the public imagination, and has transformed research priorities in astrophysics. Those...