Speaker - Dr. Mary Lou West
Exoplanets and Their Architecture
Powerful satellites have now located over 5000 exoplanets and characterized their properties. Many are in multi-planet systems, and some are in the habitable zone of their star. However, many systems have very different architecture than our solar system with its giant planets far from the star. How could hot Jupiters have happened? What could foster planet migration? We now have some theories.
Mary Lou West, KC2NMC, has been excited about astronomy for many years. She studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities where she earned a PhD in astrophysics. She retired in 2012 from teaching astronomy and physics for 42 years at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. Her research interests are the properties of meteorites, active sunspots and their effect of Earth’s ionosphere, spectra, and exoplanets. She organized the popular Public Telescope Nights at MSU, and advises the Montclair amateur astronomy club NJAG, the Cranford astronomy club AAI, and the Vermont Astronomical Society. Since retirement she has observed the spectrum of Nova Delphini 2013 and supernova 2014J in M82 (the cigar galaxy), has led a team of amateur astronomers in observing the transits of exoplanet candidates, and analyzed data with the world- wide HamSCI team. Amateur radio operators (hams) bounce their communication signals off the bottom of the Earth’s ionosphere. The time and spatial extent of their contacts tell us about the altitude of this atmospheric layer and the oscillations that sometimes happen there. These long waves can be triggered by solar flares, the polar vortex, and volcanic eruptions like Tonga.
Mary Lou has two children and four grandchildren.
