Dark Sky Auditorium Talks

 

Friday

Exploration Efforts in the Flight Instrument Group in NASA Ames
Vandana Jha (Ames Research Center)
The Flight Instrument Group at NASA Ames is developing advanced atmospheric and environmental sensors, including the Mars Sonic Anemometer, Saltation Sensor, Doppler Wind and Thermal Sounder, 3D Cameras, and the Atmospheric Structure Instrument. These technologies aim to increase their Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for future planetary and atmospheric exploration missions.
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

The Wonders of Dark Skies: Astrophotography, Astronomy, Light Pollution and Prevention
Jeremy Evans (Dark Sky International Ambassador and Astrophotographer)
Learn about light pollution, its effects on health and wildlife, and simple ways to protect our night skies. Includes a night sky tour of the darkest places in the western U.S. featuring the Milky Way, lunar rainbows, meteor showers, distant galaxies, comets, nebulas, and eclipses.
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Astrophotography “How-to” Session
Jeremy Evans (Dark Sky International Ambassador and Astrophotographer)
An opportunity to learn how to take pictures of the stars with your own DSLR camera! Intended for astrophotography newcomers. Participants should bring a DSLR camera and tripod.
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Keynote Talk

The Search for Life Beyond Earth - How It Works, Where It Stands, and Why It Matters
Bill Diamond (SETI Institute)
With the discovery of the ubiquity of exoplanets, the search for life beyond Earth has transitioned from a niche science to the most important and fundamental research question in all of astronomy and astrophysics. These three words: “Are we alone?” constitute the very essence NASA science and space exploration and they represent the core mission of the SETI Institute. But how do we answer the question - are we alone, and is there life and intelligence beyond Earth?

SETI Institute President and CEO, Bill Diamond will describe science and technology behind the search for life and intelligence elsewhere in the Universe, share what we have learned thus far, and offer his perspectives on why this endeavor is so important - to everyone!

Are we alone? Come and find out for yourself!
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium
Tickets required; pick up at Visitor Center the day before.
Tickets are required for the Keynote talks. Pick up your free ticket on a first come first serve basis starting the day before at Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

 

Saturday

The Most Important Star in The Universe
Becca Robinson & Simon Steel (SETI Institute)
Our Milky Way galaxy is a cosmic city of 300 billion stars. Of all these stars, hot and cool, giant and dwarf, young and old, only one has definitively nurtured a planet that is teeming with life. So just how special is our Sun? What makes it different, or similar, to its vast stellar family? And what should we be looking for as we search for a second Sun, and a second Earth? This stellar presentation will take a tour through the Milky Way to check out the amazing variety of stars that make up our home galaxy, before taking a deep dive into our very own star, the Sun.
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

NISAR at 6 Months: A Story of Resilience and Ground-breaking Earth Science
Carson Schubert (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Space is hard, and few know this better than those who worked to get NISAR operational this past autumn. From flights across the globe, to a global pandemic, to last-minute hardware changes, the past decade and more has challenged those who rode its waves. Come hear about the windy path to launch, the excitement and terror of deployment, and most importantly, the revolutionary science this spacecraft is now producing daily, including on our national parks.
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Understanding the Formation and Evolution of Galaxies
Cameron Hummels (California Institute of Technology)
Galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are among the basic building blocks in our universe. Discovered only one hundred years ago, galaxies are complex systems consisting of billions of stars, along with gas and dark matter. They occupy much of what we see when we point our telescopes up in the night sky. I will discuss what scientists have learned about galaxies both from telescope observations as well as sophisticated computer simulations to better understand how galaxies form and evolve since the birth of our universe.
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Diary of a Teenage Rover: 13 Years of the Curiosity Mission
Doug Ellison (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Since its landing in August 2012, the Curiosity Rover has studied, drilled, measured, and roved the floor of a giant impact crater and now sits on the foothills of an 18,000 ft mountain at its center. What has the Curiosity Rover learned, what challenges have its team faced, and what is yet to come for this intrepid rover?
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Astrophotography “How-to” Session
Jeremy Evans (Dark Sky International Ambassador)
An opportunity to learn how to take pictures of the stars with your own DSLR camera! Note this session is intended for astrophotography newcomers. Participants should bring their DSLR camera and tripod.
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Keynote Presentation

Building the World’s Most Powerful Radio Telescope
Gregg Hallinan (California Institute of Technology)
Caltech is developing the world's most powerful radio telescope, the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA), a part of the Schmidt Observatory System. Construction will begin in 2026 in a remote radio-quiet valley in Nevada. 1,650 dishes, each 20 ft (6.15 m) in diameter, will be deployed across a 12.5 x 10 mile area. Signals will be transmitted via underground fiber-optic cables and combined in a central supercomputer, or “radio camera,” that will process data at a rate of 200 Tb/s, comparable to the total internet traffic in the United States. This unprecedented capability will produce a movie of the changing sky as seen through radio waves. It will enable the detection of one billion new radio sources, a hundred times more than all previous radio telescopes combined. The DSA is expected to drive discoveries across radio astronomy, including identifying exotic neutron stars, mapping the cosmic web, tracking the formation and evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes over cosmic time, and detecting the stretching and squeezing of the very fabric of the Universe.
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium
Tickets are required for the Keynote talks. Pick up your free ticket on a first come first serve basis starting the day before at Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

 

Sunday

By Land and By Air: Exploring Mars with NASA's Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter
Nathan Williams and Roland Brockers (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
NASA's Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter have worked in tandem to explore the ancient geology of Jezero Crater on Mars. These missions investigated landscapes similar to those in Death Valley: alluvial fans, lava flows, sand dunes/ripples, and more. Join us in seeing Mars from this new aerial perspective, and how we look to the great analogs in Death Valley here on Earth to help us prepare for future missions to the red planet!
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Astrobiology 101
Luke Sollitt (NASA Ames Research Center)
Not too long ago, the idea of astrobiology was confined only to the realm of science fiction. Over the last 30+ years, however, it has evolved into a major academic field and has become one of the principal foci of NASA’s exploration enterprise. Today, astrobiologists are looking for life on other worlds. What does it mean to do that? What are they looking for, and how are they looking? Dr. Sollitt will talk about what this new science is, and how it gets done: with telescopes looking at the stars, missions to other worlds of our Solar System, and right here on Earth studying strange life forms that would have been thought impossible in the quite recent past.
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Astrophysicist Q&A
(California Institute of Technology)
A panel of professional astronomers and astrophysicists from Caltech will field questions from the audience on all topics related to astronomy, physics, and space science. Join us and bring your burning questions about planets, stars, galaxies, life in the universe, black holes, science fiction, and more!
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

Ocean Worlds: The Search for Life Outside the Earth
Bonnie Buratti (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
One of the greatest questions is: are we alone? For decades, life outside the Earth was sought on the surface of Mars. Now NASA is engaged in a program to search for habitable environments in the subsurface oceans believed to exist within icy moons. This talk is an overview of Europa Clipper, the first mission to investigate such an ocean.
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium

The Brightness of the Void
Leslie Heid (Laser Physicist)
Let's explore the infinite rainbow that fills our cosmos! Mission Modeler Leslie Heid from JPL's Deep Space Network discusses the electromagnetic spectrum and the advantages and disadvantages of different wavelengths for use in spacecraft communications.
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM, Furnace Creek Visitor Center Auditorium