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ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT OPEN HOUSE

Please join us at the campus observatory at 9:00pm on Friday, May 25 for a guided tour of the night sky. Professor Chris Churchill will present a short astronomical talk, aided by graduate students Michael Kirk, Maria Patterson, and Ryan Hamilton. Objects to be observed include the moon and the planets Mars, Saturn and Venus. The Beehive Open Cluster, Globular Cluster M3, Pinwheel Galaxy M101 and many more celestial objects also will be observed. Children are particularly welcome!

WATCH THE SKIES

Enjoy a solar eclipse on May 20 up in Albuquerque (or a partial eclipse from Las Cruces). Other nearby viewing sites include Gallup, Grants, and Portales in New Mexico, and Brownfield and Lubbock in Texas. If you wish to observe the eclipse from Las Cruces, please join us.

On the evening of June 5, catch the last transit of Venus of the century. (The next one occurs in 2117.)

RECENT ASTRONOMY GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS

Our hats go off to our nine astronomy graduate students (shown below) who participated in the NMSU College of Arts & Sciences Three-Minute Thesis Competition on March 3, 2012. Students had three minutes each to present a thesis project (on one slide) and make the case in as compelling a fashion as possible, in a new event designed to encourage graduate students to polish their communication skills and engage an audience.

Our students did us all proud! NSF graduate research fellow Jeff Coughlin tied for first place in the compeition with his presentation on Probing Exoplanet Atmospheres, and planetary scientist Candace Gray scored a third place win for her talk on Nightglow on Venus and its Connection to Solar Flares. Just imagine what they'll be able to cover in 45 minutes for a full PhD thesis presentation ...

Congratulations to graduate students Candace Grey, winner of the 2011 Pegasus Award for excellence in teaching, and to Michael Kirk, who was recently awarded the 2011 Zia Award for excellence in research. Joining them are the 2011 winners of the Murrell Award for outstanding research or professional development, Ryan Hamilton and Paul Strycker, and Liz Klimek, winner of the 2011 Rappaport Award for outstanding public service.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

A warm welcome to Dr. Sean Lindsay, our most recent NMSU astronomy PhD. Sean defended his thesis on the Discrete Dipole Approximation Model of Crystalline Forsterite on February 24, 2012. He will take up a postdoctoral position this summer at the University of Tennessee.

Congratulations to James Stockton, who defended his PhD thesis on Pamela: Results on Electron and Positron Spectra in Cosmic Rays in November of 2011!

Bravo to Mike Sussman, who completed his PhD thesis on Modeling Seasonal Change on Uranus with the EPIC GCM in August of 2011! Mike will continue his work modeling planetary atmospheres as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Louisville, working with Tim Dowling.