August Program Meeting: Lunar Laser Ranging
Posted by Chris Radcliff in Calendar, Moon Society, Science on July 28, 2010
2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Location:
Serra Mesa Branch Library (map)
9005 Aero Dr, San Diego, CA
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) has for decades been one of our most powerful tools for testing Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity. LLR provides the best tests to date of the equivalence principle, of the constancy of the strength of gravity, of gravitomagnetism, and much more. In addition, LLR probes the nature of the lunar interior. The science of LLR will be presented, along with a description of the technique. The design and results of APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) will be highlighted. Also covered will be APOLLO’s recent discovery of the lost reflector on the Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover, after almost 40 years of silence.
Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at UCSD. Murphy was an amateur astronomer in high school, a physics undergraduate at Georgia Tech, then combined the two interests as a graduate student at Caltech, where he built an infrared integral field spectrograph for the Palomar 200-inch telescope. With this spectrograph, Murphy disentangled train-wreck galaxy mergers called ultraluminous infrared galaxies. After graduation in 2000, Murphy switched gears as a postdoc at the University of Washington in Seattle to initiate the APOLLO lunar ranging project. He continued the development of APOLLO after he arrived at UCSD in 2003. Today, he continues to lead the APOLLO project, also developing keen interests in energy use in our society.
Everyone is welcome to attend this presentation. Email events@sdspace.org if you have any questions.
Comments
Will this presentation be rescheduled?
Yes, we are talking to the presenter about rescheduling for sometime later this year.