Stony Brook University
7:30 PM; via Zoom
Friday, November 05, 2021
An update on NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter
Prof. Alan Calder
NASA's Juno spacecraft was launched on August 5, 2011 and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Named after the "cloud piercing" wife of Jupiter, its mission is to investigate the atmosphere of Jupiter to measure the composition, particularly the amount of water, and to observe Jupiter's magnetic and gravitational fields. The information we are gaining from Juno will help us better understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter, which will also help us understand the formation of giant planets. I will discuss the layout of the solar system and what we know about Jupiter, theories of planet formation, questions the Juno mission strives to answer, and the latest results from Juno.
Alan Calder joined the Stony Brook Physics & Astronomy department in 2007 after research appointments at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. His research is in numerically modeling astrophysical phenomena, and he has studied a variety of problems including core collapse and thermonuclear supernovae, merging neutron stars, and classical novae.
