March Monthly Meeting

via Zoom Thursday, March 18, 7:00 PM

Kepler-186f  NASA AMES/JPL-CALTECH/T. PYLE

All These Worlds: The Exoplanet Revolution

Dr. Dan Durda, Southwest Research Institute

For generations we've wondered whether we are alone in the Universe. Thanks in large part to space missions like Kepler, we now know that we live in a galaxy full of diverse planetary systems. Not only are we detecting planets around thousands of other stars, we are beginning to characterize them as well, revealing the vast stage for the play of life in the Universe.

Dr. Daniel D. Durda is with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.  He has more than twenty-five years of experience researching asteroids, Vulcanoids, Kuiper belt comets, and interplanetary dust, including airborne astronomical observations from high-performance jet aircraft.  He is an active pilot with time logged in over a dozen types of aircraft and has more than 110 minutes of time conducting experiments on NASA’s zero-gravity KC-135 aircraft. He has co-authored a book, published numerous articles popularizing planetary science and human exploration of space, and has appeared in more than 70 television science documentaries. Dan is an experienced cave diver and participates in underwater cave rescue and recovery missions.