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Annular Solar Eclipse, 2012 May 20

An annular solar eclipse is to take place this Sunday, visible from the west coast of the United States and parts of Eastern Asia.

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly in between the Sun and the Earth, but its apparent diameter is smaller than that of the Sun, resulting in a very bright ring or “annulus” surrounding the dark silhouette of the Moon. In Los Angeles, the eclipse will appear as a partial eclipse with 79% of the Sun’s diameter obscured by the Moon at maximum. The eclipse will take place from 5:24pm – 7:42pm, peaking at 6:38pm. It will be the most extensive solar eclipse in Los Angeles since 1992.

Starting at 5.30pm on Sunday, the UCLA Undergraduate Astronomical Society will be at the top of Janss Steps, viewing the eclipse with solar telescopes and projectors. The viewing will be free and open to the public.

 

 

 

 

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May 24, 2012: Experimental Insights into Melt Generation at Convergent Plate Margins

Speaker
Christy Till
USGS

Abstract
Evidence preserved in the petrology and chemical composition of erupted arc lavas provides the basis for understanding the processes that give rise to arc magmas. Work over the past 30 years has resulted in a preponderance of evidence to suggest arc parental magmas commonly contain up to 4–6 wt% H2O and some arc andesites contain up to 8–10 wt% H2O. However, considerable uncertainty remains about the physically and compositionally complex processes that lead to the generation of hydrous arc magmas with these observed water contents. In this talk, I will present new experimental evidence regarding the systematics of melting H2O-oversaturated and chlorite-bearing undepleted peridotite from 3 to 6 GPa. These experiments are then used to understand the temperatures and chemical reactions of mantle wedge melting that constitute the primary controls on (1) the location of arc volcanoes and (2) the width of the volcanic arc.

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iPLEX Conference – Extended Deadline for Abstracts

Posted by Michaela Shopland

Abstract Deadline Extension

The final deadline for abstract submission for the Ices and Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference has passed, but we are still accepting registrations (i.e you can attend, but cannot give a scheduled talk).

The abstract submission form is accessed by registering at the link below. Registration is compulsory and costs $75 (please see logistics page for details of what this cost includes). If you have already registered, you should have received an email with a link to upload abstracts. If you have questions or are having any difficulties, please contact iplex_conferences@ess.ucla.edu:

 

Final Announcement

On June 12th and 13th, the UCLA Institute for Planets and Exoplanets (iPLEX) will host a two day interdisciplinary conference on the nature, distribution, origin and evolution of frozen volatiles and organics in the inner solar system. Topics will include:

• Polar ice and permafrost on planets and asteroids

• Delivery of terrestrial planet atmospheres and oceans

• Water and organics in comets

• Liquid water habitats in the inner solar system

The conference format will include summary talks as well as contributed papers, with time set aside for discussion and questions. Attendance is limited to 60 participants.

 

 

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May 10, 2012: Ancient Stone Sculptures: A Nexus between Archaeometry and the Geosciences

Speaker:
Christian Fischer
UCLA

Abstract:
Stone sculptures represent an important corpus of artifacts that have often survived the effects of time and their technical study provides the means for a better understanding of the social organization, religious beliefs and level of craftsmanship of ancient cultures. Beside style and iconography, the scientific analysis of the constitutive materials and their alterations is essential for the sourcing of raw materials and the conservation of the sculptures. Because of the very nature of the materials, their complexity and origin, as well as the methodology and analytical techniques used for their characterization, the scientific study of ancient stone sculptures illustrates perfectly the close and fascinating connections between archaeometry and the geosciences. By combining new portable technology and more traditional approaches, these relationships and the challenges posed by the analysis of archaeological stone materials will be discussed with examples from Cambodia and the Easter Island.

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Hilke Schlichting wins Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research

At a May 10 reception held in the CNSI Auditorium, Earth & Space Sciences’ Hilke Schlichting was awarded the 2012 Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research at UCLA. This award honors important postdoctoral contributions to the university’s interrelated missions of research, teaching, and public service.

Hilke is a theoretical astrophysicist interested in the formation of planetary systems, and has been a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA since 2010. Her diverse research accomplishments at UCLA have addressed different aspects of the Kuiper Belt, which is a ring of a billion bodies located beyond Neptune, discovered in 1992 by David Jewitt, also of UCLA Earth & Space Sciences. The Kuiper Belt is central to planet formation studies as a primordial relic of the accretion phase. It is also the source of short-period comets.

Recently, Schlichting used Kuiper Belt binaries (double objects held together by gravity) to assess the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago. She then formulated a collisional growth model to understand the size distribution of Kuiper belt objects, extending this model in another paper to account for velocity dispersion in a self-consistent way.

Stepping outside her “theoretical” training, Hilke conducted a massive analysis of Hubble telescope data in search of occultation events, finding two (to-date) in competition with much larger, international groups of observers who have so far found none. As a side-project, she discovered a simple explanation for a long-standing puzzle concerning the addition of late-added material on Earth (detected by geochemists) and, with ESS’s Paul Warren, wrote one of the few papers ever to have both dynamicists and geochemists as authors.

Watch Hilke describing her research in the videos below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09jYeadv7mk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sugR_bKC7v8

Hilke Schlichting’s Webpage

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Rare Musical Performance at iPLEX Lunch

At last week’s iPLEX lunch, we were treated to a special talk by Maarten Roos of Lightcurve Films. Maarten, who is an astrophysicist turned professional science filmmaker, described his transition from working behind the telescope to behind the camera, and demonstrated his use of film as a tool for educating and informing the public about science.

As a bonus to this multimedia presentation, we also had the opportunity to see Maarten’s composer, William Zeitler, play one of the most rare and least heard musical instruments in the world. The glass armonica  was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761, after hearing music played by rubbing the rims of wine glasses (“Being charmed by the sweetness of its tones…I wished only to see the glasses disposed in a more convenenient form”).  It is one of the world’s “endangered musical instruments”, with only a handful of modern-day musicians able to play it. A video of William’s performance is linked below.

William Zeitler assembles the wooden base of his "Glass Armonica"
Need for amplification is one of the reasons why the glass armonica went out of fashion in the early 19th century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTY8yXLxQyA

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May 3, 2012: Mars Science Laboratory: The Search for Habitable Environments

Speaker:
John Grotzinger

Abstract:
Scheduled to land in August of 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission was initiated to explore the habitability of Mars. This includes both modern environments as well as ancient environments recorded by the stratigraphic rock record preserved at the Gale crater landing site. The Curiosity rover has a designed lifetime of at least one Mars year (~23 months), and drive capability of at least 20 km. Curiosity’s science payload was specifically assembled to assess habitability and includes a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer and gas analyzer that will search for organic carbon in rocks, regolith fines, and the atmosphere (SAM instrument); an x-ray diffractometer that will determine mineralogical diversity (CheMin instrument); focusable cameras that can image landscapes and rock/regolith textures in natural color (MAHLI, MARDI, and Mastcam instruments); an alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer for in situ determination of rock and soil chemistry (APXS instrument); a laser-induced breakdown spectrometer to remotely sense the chemical composition of rocks and minerals (ChemCam instrument); an active neutron spectrometer designed to search for water in rocks/regolith (DAN instrument); a weather station to measure modern-day environmental variables (REMS instrument); and a sensor designed for continuous monitoring of background solar and cosmic radiation (RAD instrument). The various payload elements will work together to detect and study potential sampling targets with remote and in situ measurements; to acquire samples of rock, soil, and atmosphere and analyze them in onboard analytical instruments; and to observe the environment around the rover. The 155-km diameter Gale Crater was chosen as Curiosity’s field site based on several attributes: an interior mound of ancient flat-lying strata extending almost 5 km above the elevation of the landing site; the lower few hundred meters of the mound show a progression with relative age from clay-bearing to sulfate-bearing strata, separated by an unconformity from overlying likely anhydrous strata; the landing ellipse is characterized by a mixture of alluvial fan and high thermal inertia/high albedo stratified deposits; and a number of stratigraphically/geomorphically distinct fluvial features. Samples of the crater wall and rim rock, and more recent to currently active surface materials also may be studied. Gale’s regional context and strong evidence for a progression through multiple potentially habitable environments, represented by a stratigraphic record of extraordinary extent, insure preservation of a rich record of the environmental history of early Mars.