Seeing Through Things: The Invisible Solar System
Zeidler Dome, TELUS World of Science Edmonton, 11211 142 St NW Edmonton
7:30 PM (MST), Meeting begins, including guest speaker, AstroImaging Corner, and other RASC news.
FREE and open to the public.
This is a hybrid meeting. You may attend in person or remotely using Zoom.
Seeing Through Things: The Invisible Solar System
Guest Speaker: Dr. Martin Connors, Athabasca University
An amazing aspect of the space age is our ability to see other solid bodies of the Solar System as “worlds”, ranging from rocky small bodies to large ones with dense turbulent atmospheres, all giving rise to amazing images. More subtly, the space between these bodies is not a vacuum and in addition to having particles, including exotic ones like neutrinos, traversing it, has fields such as magnetic fields and gravity. The Sun’s atmosphere permeates the Solar System as the “solar wind”, and only recently have spacecraft left this region known as the heliosphere; the Earth’s outmost atmosphere extends further than the Moon and will soon be explored by NASA’s Carruthers “geocorona” mission. Closer to Earth, the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field can give rise to auroras and magnetic storms. In many ways, the invisible Solar System matches in beauty its visible counterpart, although the mind’s eye is needed to see the intricate grand design.
Martin Connors
Martin Connors has been an RASC member since the late 1960s, which led to an education in astronomy and physics and becoming a professor at Athabasca University. He is still associated with his alma mater, Western University in London Ontario, as an adjunct professor collaborating on planetary science topics. Most recently he was a visiting researcher at UCLA in Los Angeles, investigating space physics using the NASA THEMIS mission. In 2024 his book “Invisible Solar System” was published, and he is now working on a second book.
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