Monthly Meeting | NoCoAstro

Our monthly meeting will be held on Thursday, August 7th at the Fort Collins Museum Of Discover in the Otterbox Dome Theater. The meeting officially starts at 6:15pm but feel free to show up early for social time. We will have refreshments and snacks available at 5:45pm. Afterwards at 8:00pm, members are invited to dinner at Penrose Taphouse & Eatery. Contact Greg Halac if you are interested. Reservations are limited.

Speaker - Dr. Adeene Denton, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at SWRI

Sealed with a Kiss: The Cosmic Romance Behind the Formation of Pluto and Charon

Abstract: Scientists have theorized for decades that Pluto's unusually large moon Charon formed through a process similar to Earth's moon – a massive collision between two planet-sized bodies, that left Pluto and Charon behind. The process by which this giant impact occurred, and how Charon became subsquently captured as Pluto's satellite, remained poorly understood until recently. In this talk, we'll learn about some of the cutting-edge simulations that revealed new insight into Pluto and Charon's initial collisions, as well as how that impact may have big implications for the system's geological evolution, including how we get to the surfaces that were imaged by New Horizons in 2015.

Bio: Adeene Denton is a geophysicist and planetary scientist interested in giant impacts and their influence on the history, evolution and tectonic activity of icy satellites, ocean worlds, and Kuiper Belt Objects. Adeene uses a combination of numerical tools, from shock physics codes to finite element modeling, to explore the effects of giant impacts and their implications for habitability in the outer Solar System. She is trained as a scientist, historian, and dancer, which informs her scientific and artistic research process. Adeene is an avid astrohumanist focused on approaching future planetary exploration from a scientific and humanistic perspective. Asteroid 16883 adeenedenton is named for Adeene’s research on impact processes on outer Solar System worlds, including Pluto.

Monthly Meeting General Info

Regular club meetings are currently held at the Otterbox Digital Dome Theater in the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, and are scheduled for the 1st Thursday of every month. Please verify the meeting date and location on the calendar and find out what we have planned. The business portion of the meeting is scheduled for 15 minutes starting at 6:15pm although members often show up early at 5:45pm for social time ... and snacks. :-) Regular topics include:

Announcements on upcoming NCAS events: speakers, stargazing, outreaching, etc.
Brief updates from the club president, treasurer and outreach coordinator.
Items of general interest as shared by members and visitors.

After the business meeting, speakers present an astronomy-related program beginning at 6:30pm. It is free of charge and the public is welcome. Talks are typically geared towards people with a high-school science background but the level does vary. Feel free to contact a club officer for guidance if the target level is not apparent from the talk description. Talks typically last for 45 minutes. Questions are usually welcome both during and after the talk.

NoCoAstro invites speakers to be our guest for dinner immediately after the club meeting. Dinner details are sent to the “club-news” email list shortly before the meeting. Dinner provides a great opportunity to welcome and get to know our speaker. Typically ~10 club members usually attend.

NoCoAstro greatly appreciates the members and experts in the Northern Colorado region who have taken the time to share their knowledge with the public and the club.