Roanoke Valley
Astronomical
Society
Roanoke coordinates: 37o 16' 04" N, 79o 56' 26"W Altitude is about 1050 feet (320
meters)
Mobile Page Index
M31 Andromeda page background photo by Clem Elechi
RVAS Monthly Meeting: Our next meeting will be on August 17th at 7:00:Pm, and will be held at the VWCC STEM building ST314.
Our speaker for the meeting will be Dr. Amy Simon. She will speak on ” Cloudy Skies: What we learn from the clouds on the Giant Planets”
Dr. Simon is the Senior Scientist for Planetary Atmospheres Research in the Solar System Exploration Division at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She received her PhD in Astronomy in 1998 from the New Mexico State University. Her scientific research involves the study of the composition, dynamics, and cloud structure in giant planet atmospheres, primarily from spacecraft observations. She leads the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, a yearly program for observing each of the outer planets.
Dr. Simon is also involved in multiple robotic flight missions, and was a team associate for the Galileo Solid State imager and a co-investigator on the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) teams. She currently serves as the Project Scientist for OSIRIS-APEX and Lucy, and leads the Lucy/L'Ralph and APEX/OVIRS instruments.