SUNSET: 
Upcoming Astronomy Events
As a service to our community, Sky & Telescope lists astronomy-related events, including star parties, observatory public nights, astronomy talks, and more. Star parties offer dark skies and astronomical fellowship and often cater to families and feature special activities for kids. Public nights give the general public a chance to view the sky through large telescopes, and public talks are a great place to learn the fundamentals of the science and the craft.
You’ll also see online events offered here.
And if you’d like free copies of Sky & Telescope‘s Let’s Go Stargazing flyer or door prizes for your next star party, you can fill out this form.
Exploration of the Outer Solar System: The Voyagers and Beyond
March 4, 2022 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EST
Free
NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched in 1977 and flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Forty-five years later, they are now about 4 times farther than Pluto from the Sun and are in the interstellar medium, having left the sphere of influence of the Sun – the Heliosphere. The Voyager mission opened our eyes to many different new worlds. Subsequently the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft orbited Jupiter and Saturn respectively, delving deeper into the science of the gas giants and their moons. This talk will present the glories of Voyager and discuss current and future exploration of the outer solar system.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Fran Bagenal was born and grew up in England. She studied Physics and Geophysics at the University of Lancaster. In 1976, inspired by NASA’s missions to Mars and the prospect of the Voyager mission, she moved to the U.S. for graduate study at MIT. Her 1981 PhD thesis involved analysis of data from the Voyager Plasma Science experiment in Jupiter’s giant magnetosphere. She spent 1982-1987 as a post-doctoral researcher in space physics at Imperial College, London. Voyager flybys of Uranus and Neptune brought her back to the U.S. and she joined the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1989. She is professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Research Scientist at the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics. In 2015 she stopped teaching in order to have time to focus on Pluto and Jupiter.
In addition to the Voyager mission, Dr. Bagenal has been on the science teams of the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Deep Space 1 mission to Comet Borrelly. She edited Jupiter: Planet, Satellites and Magnetosphere (Cambridge University Press, 2004). She heads the plasma teams on the first two New Frontiers missions: the New Horizons mission that – after a 9.5-year flight – flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 and Juno that went into orbit over the poles of Jupiter in 2016.
