Cedar Amateur Astronomers Public Night

Join us as local Cedar Rapidian William Kurth from the University of Iowa department of physics and astronomy discusses the ongoing NASA Juno mission. Kurth, who studies radio and plasma waves, is the lead on the waves instrument aboard the Juno craft. A graduate of Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School, he has gone on to an accomplished career at the University of Iowa. 

Juno successfully completed its primary mission at Jupiter in July 2021. The Juno science team made a case to NASA to continue the mission through September 2025 given that the spacecraft and its science instruments were in very good health.  The nature of the Juno orbit results in crossing Jupiter’s equatorial plane at successively smaller radial distances with each orbit, allowing the extended mission trajectory to include close flybys of Ganymede, Europa, and Io, thereby expanding the focus of the mission from Jupiter’s interior, composition, origin, and its polar magnetosphere, to also include new observations of the Galilean satellites.  This talk will discuss some of the discoveries of Juno’s prime mission, its observations at Ganymede and Europa, and plans for the remainder of the mission including Io flybys. Some of the results from the University of Iowa radio and plasma wave instrument will be highlighted. 

Weather permitting, after the presentation our members will be operating several of our large telescopes showing impressive views of objects in our beautiful night skies. Coincidentally, August 12 is also near the peak of the Perseid meteor shower so cross your fingers for some nice meteor sightings! 

This event is free and open to all ages, although the presentation is at a college level. It will also be available on Zoom. A link and more information can be found at https://cedar-astronomers.org/events