The Fall 2008 Barringer Lecture on Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, originally scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, has been postponed. For information, please contact the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences  at 479-575-7625 or csaps@uark.edu.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Jupiter’s Galilean satellites Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto encompass some of the most bizarre environments known in the solar system, spanning from that of Io, the most volcanically active and perhaps the most inhospitable body known, to Europa, currently the focus of a search for life in the solar system because of its subsurface ocean. An expert in the field will present highlights from the recent discoveries and advances in our understanding of these fascinating objects.

Melissa A. McGrath, a chief scientist from the Marshall Space Flight Center, will deliver the Barringer Lecture for the fall 2008 semester, titled “Jupiter’s Galilean Satellites.” The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 6, in the Space Center Theater, Old Museum Building, Room 201. Admission is free and open to all members of the university community and the public. Refreshments will be available after the talk. 

One of the premier areas of scientific return in solar system research in the past 10 years, due in large part to the Galileo mission and observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, has been a remarkable increase in our knowledge about these satellites. Discoveries have been made of tenuous molecular oxygen atmospheres on Europa and Ganymede, a magnetic field and accompanying auroral emissions at the poles of Ganymede, and of ozone and sulfur dioxide embedded in the surfaces of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Io’s unusual sulfur dioxide atmosphere, including its volcanic plumes and strong electrodynamic interaction with magnetospheric plasma, has finally been quantitatively characterized.

The lecture is part of the Barringer Lecture Series, which is sponsored by the Barringer Crater Co. This visit is also sponsored by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as part of their Outer Planets Colloquium Series. McGrath is also the deputy director of the Science Mission Directorate’s Solar System Division at NASA headquarters and the Science and Technology Directorate at the Marshall Space Flight Center. She is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Alabama and Johns Hopkins University. She is the chair of the American Astronomical Society Nominating Committee and the secretary-treasurer and council member of the society’s Division of Planetary Sciences. She is also the head of the Community Missions Office at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. Her research involves Jovian satellite atmospheres and planetary and satellite aurora.

Visit http://spacecenter.uark.edu for more information on the Space Center.