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IPLEX Ices & Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference Recap

Group photo from Day 1 of the IPLEX Ices & Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference

The first IPLEX-hosted conference, titled Ices and Organics in the Inner Solar System, was held in the historic Royce Hall on the UCLA campus on June 12-13, 2012.  The conference was a great success, with more than fifty attendees and twenty half-hour featured presentations that covered a diverse array of topics concerning organics found in the inner solar system. Highlights included several talks on recent work involving water-ice distribution and stability on the Moon, Mars and Mercury and recent results from the Mars Phoenix lander indicating the presence of unexpected salts on the surface of Mars.  Additionally, asteroidal and cometary ice and volatile transport were discussed in detail.  For a complete list of abstracts, click here. 

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In pursuit of Venus

Roughly 1,500 people formed long lines Tuesday on Janss Terrace to get a glimpse of an astronomical phenomenon that won’t happen again until 2117.

For them, the wait to get a good look at the second and last transit of Venus of the 21st century was well worth it, thanks to telescopes and other solar sight devices manned by knowledgeable members of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and graduate students with the campus organization, Astronomy Live!

Read full article by Kathleen Micham

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IPLEX Ices and Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference: Preliminary Program

Preliminary Program

June 12, 2012

Time Presenter Title of Talk
9:00 Breakfast
9:15 Welcome David Paige and David Jewitt
9:30 Dale, P., Cruikshank Organic Molecules on Saturn’s Satellites: Relationship to Kuiper Belt Objects, Interstellar Dust, and the Solar Nebula
10:00 Ben Teolis Evidence for polar regolith cold trapping of exospheric
O2 and CO2 on icy moons Rhea and Dione: A low-temperature analogue to inner
solar system volatiles?
10:30 Henry H. Hsieh Ice in the Main Asteroid Belt
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Joshua P. Emery Ices and organics on asteroids and comets
11:45 Julie C Castillo-Rogez 1 Ceres is an Astrobiological Target
12:15 Lunch on Campus
13:30 Adam Waszczak A search for active asteroids with the Palomar Transient
Factory survey
14:00 James M Bauer WISE/NEOWISE COMETS: PRELIMINARY PROPERTIES OF NUCLEI
& GAS EMISSON
14:30 Rachel A Stevenson An Ice Grain Halo Around Comet 17P/Holmes
15:00 Coffee Break
15:30 Krishna Muralidharan Theoretical and experimental evidence for wet accretion
of Earth
16:00 Sandra Pizzarello Large enantiomeric excesses in primitive meteorites and
the diverse effects of water in cosmochemical evolution
16:30 William I. Newman Planetary Migration and Volatile Transport: The Perils of Modeling Planetesimals
17:00 Discussion
17:30 Adjourn
18:00 Dinner at UCLA Faculty Center

 

June 13, 2012

Time Presenter Title of Talk
8:30 Breakfast
8:45 Welcome (Paige and Jewitt)
9:00 Norbert Schorghofer New Views of Old Volatiles
9:30 Russell Cox Enabling Technologies for DeepCryo Volatiles
Experimentation and Exploration
10:00 Ben, Bussey A COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF LUNAR PERMANENTLY SHADOWED AREAS.
10:30 Sarah T. Crites In-situ production of organic molecules at the poles of
the Moon
10:45 Nancy, L, Chabot Craters Hosting Radar-bright Deposits in Mercury’s Polar
Regions
11:15 Coffee Break
11:45 David A. Paige Thermal stability of polar ices and organics on Mercury
12:15 Michael T. Mellon Ices on Mars: Dynamics, Distribution, and Questions
13:30 Lunch on Campus
14:00 Adrian Jon Brown Transport and Thermal Metamorphism of Water Ice in the
Martian North Polar Springtime
14:30 Patricio Becerra CO2 FROST HALOS ON THE SOUTH POLAR RESIDUAL CAP OF MARS
15:00 Selby Cull Perchlorate Salts and Water on Mars: An overview of
Recent Work
15:30 Discussion
16:00 Adjourn