Imaging the Storm-Tossed Winds of Outer Space

Name: Imaging the Storm-Tossed Winds of Outer Space
Start: 2024-10-07T19:30:00-06:00
Location: Chautauqua Community House

Schedule

Mon Oct 07 2024 at 07:30 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Chautauqua Community House | Boulder, CO

Door time: 7:00
Show time: 7:30
Since the 1960s, we’ve known that “outer space” between planets is full of a tenuous mix of magnetic field and fast-moving gas: the tumultuous, continuously expanding outer atmosphere of the Sun itself. This material sweeps over the Earth continuously, giving rise to “space weather” including aurora right here in Colorado. NASA’s PUNCH mission, scheduled to launch in early 2025 and be operated from downtown Boulder, will image this intriguing and beautifully structured material as it streaks outward across the void.
Dr. Craig DeForest:
Dr. Craig DeForest is the Director of Solar and Heliospheric Physics at the Southwest Research Institute, leads the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission for NASA, and is the former Chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division. He works to better understand how our nearest star affects the planet we live on. He has conceived and built several new types of scientific instrument, and holds four patents on instrumentation and image processing methods. DeForest lives in Nederland, CO with his wife and two teenagers, and skis Eldora regularly.