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One of our most active scientists in this area is Dr. Scott Sandford. On one of NASA Ames outrageously successful 'Family Night Education Series', hundreds of people came to hear scott speak about, among other things, the Stardust Mission, on which he is a Co-Investigator. Below is a picture of scott taking his audience on a three dimensional tour of comet wild2, the target of the Stardust Mission
Dr. Sandford is all the way at the back, click to expand
At the council meeting in Zurich the Council of the Meteoritical Society named Dr. Scott Sandford a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society. Sandford won this honor because of his pioneering work in the study of cometary and asteroidal dust, his work on the connection between interstellar processes and meteorites, and his tireless service as an editor of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
Research from the astrochemistry lab was featured in a pop-science article by Leslie Mullen entitled 'Building Life from Star-Stuff' that can be found at the astrobiology magazine online.
From the California Academy of Sciences Museum to classrooms, The Astrochemistry Lab is very involved in education and public outreach efforts. Here is a partial list of some of the talks given by members of the astrochem lab in recent months.
In the past year Sandford has also given the NASA Ames Director's Colloquium, the Astrobiology Institute Directors Colloquium, a talk to the Mount Diablo Astronomical Society in Concord, CA, a series of talks at the Ponderosa Middle school in Sunnyvale, the San Mateo College Astronomy Day Lecture, San Mateo College Planetarium, and he spoke as part of the NASA explorers school astrobiology workshop at Moffett Field. He has also given technical talks at the 6th workshop on the Stardust Sample return Mission in Timber Cove, CA.
In mid July Max Bernstein delivered a public lecture at the University of Hong Kong to a large varied audience. The talk broadly covered astrobiology, the origin of life, and the search for life in the Solar System. That day Dr. Bernstein visited with Sun Kwok to discuss infrared spectra of planetary nebulae, and visited the laboratory of Prof. Steve Pointing, where he is depicted, in the center of the adjacent photo, holding a flask containing pink halophiles - microbes that live in salt. On the left is Prof Kwok, and on the right Prof. Pointing. Previously, Dr. Bernstein took part in a royal society discussion meeting on conditions for the emergence of life and you can read about it in The economist online.
Louis Allamandola delivered the Seminar on Physics and Chemistry of Planetary Ices at JPL. His talk was entitled 'From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology and Back Again.' He discussed work from the astrochemistry lab on the spectroscopy of aromatic compounds and using lab spectra to fit the infrared emission features. Louis Allamandola also attended and spoke at Nobel Symposium 133 on Cosmic Chemistry and Molecular Astrophysics in Stockholm Sweden June 9-16. His talk was entitled 'Decoding IR spectra of cosmic ices and organics in the laboratory.' Dr. Allamandola also chair Sessioned XIII: A new frontier in space research-exobiochemistry. The program can be found online (and abstracts downloaded as PDFs) at http://www.nobel133.physto.se/Programme/Programme.htm Dr. Allamandola also gave an invited talk entitled 'Interstellar PAHs: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow' at the 231st ACS National Meeting in Atlanta, at a special symposium on 'Molecules in Space.'
At this same meeting Farid Salama gave an invited talk entitled 'Laboratory spectroscopy of PAHs and dust particles: From the laboratory to astronomical observations' and Andrew L. Mattioda spoke on 'Spectroscopy of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the interstellar environment'. See http://oasys2.confex.com/acs/231nm/techprogram/S20227.HTM for more details. Andy Mattioda and Farid Salama gave invited presentations at the 'Carbon in Space' International Workshop in Como, Italy. Salama is also on the Steering Committee for this Conference. For more information see:http://www.physik.uni-jena.de/~exphys/astrolab/workshopcis.html
Jamie Elsila took part in astronomy day at the California Academy of Sciences by presenting an introduction to astrochemistry to over a dozen visitors to the museum. She also hosted a group of 30 docents from Cal Academy that came to visit NASA Ames.
Optical Properties of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
