Our speaker for this public star night will be Dr Suzanne Metlay from Western Governors University. Her talk will be about the “Five Moons of Pluto”
Charon and the other moons of Pluto have been revealed by the New Horizons spacecraft to be fascinating worlds. Using the latest imagery from NASA, let’s explore the dark deposits of Mordor near Charon’s North Pole, and then take a look at the red crater on Nix. Styx and Kerberos have their own surprises too!
Investigate the family of objects orbiting our solar system’s first known dwarf planet as professional geoscientists struggle to explain what we see and why it’s there. Let’s celebrate the success of the New Horizons mission as this well-engineered marvel continues on to its next encounter in the Kuiper Belt and let’s reflect on what we may yet learn.
Suzanne Metlay is full-time faculty in Geoscience Teacher Education at Western Governors University, a fully online non-profit university founded in 1997 by 19 governors of western states, including Colorado. Previously, Suzanne taught astronomy and geology at Front Range Community College in Longmont and Fort Collins, was Operations Director for Secure World Foundation in Superior, and served as Education Programs Manager at CU-Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium.
Suzanne has a BA in History and Science from Harvard University and a PhD in Geology and Planetary Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She was awarded the Antarctica Service Medal from the Department of the Navy and National Science Foundation for fieldwork conducted as a participant in the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) in 1991.
Weather permitting after the presentation, visitors will be invited to look through our large telescope at various celestial objects. Public star nights are held the third Friday of each month (except July, when we are closed for annual maintenance). No reservations are necessary for these nights. Just come and join us for the talk and some observing afterwards.
If you have any questions, please call the observatory information line at 970-613-7793 or check the LTO web site at: www.starkids.org
