Penitentes: where art thou?

 Hidden in amongst the ice penitentes above is PVL PhD student Giang Nguyen! Original image "Penitentes ice formations at the southern end of the Chajnantor plain in Chile in 2005." credit: ESO, https://www.eso.org/public/images/img_1824/

By Tue Giang Nguyen

A great deal of my research recently has been dealing with atmosphere-surface interactions. In conjunction with my survey for dunes on the Martian polar cap, I’ve also been looking for surface features called penitentes. For the uninitiated, penitentes are ice and snow blade structures common in tropical alpine regions such as the Andes and the Himalayas. Although Darwin thought that these ice blades were sculpted by the wind, later glaciological research proved otherwise.

Penitentes are formed by uneven heating and subsequently sublimation of an icy surface. Imagine a pair of mirrors held together forming a v-shape with their reflective surface pointing up. Now from above, if you shine a laser onto the v-shape mirrors, you will probably see that the light will bounce between the walls sending light towards the bottom of the v. This dynamic of light bouncing off the reflective side walls and concentrating towards the depression is how the ridges and troughs of penitentes take their shape. As the trough receives more heat and sublimate more water, it deepens while the side walls receive less heat and sublimate more slowly.

Searching for Liquid Water on Mars at the Canadian Light Source

 

PVL is branching out in time! Not content to limit ourselves to today's Volatile Reserves on Mars, two members of the group, PDF Paul Godin and PhD Candidate Charissa Campbell headed out to Saskatchewan to examine the ancient atmosphere. In the image above, Paul Godin (York), Tyler Wizenberg (U of T), and Charissa Campbell (York) are pictured in front of the Canadian Light Source.

 by Dr. Paul Godin

A recent paper by Wordsworth et al. (https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071766) suggested that the greenhouse effect on ancient Mars could be stronger than previously thought due to a phenomenon called collision induced absorption (CIA). CIA is when molecules in a gas collide with each other and for a brief moment form a two-molecule complex that has its own absorption features. 

Wordsworth’s paper made a computation prediction of what the CIA for the Martian atmosphere would look like, but experimental verification of their prediction is still required. CIA is a weak absorption feature and requires spectroscopy set-ups that have long path-lengths or can handle high pressures to detect it. One method to achieve a long path length is known as a multi-pass White cell; in this set-up mirrors are placed at both ends of the cell and a beam of light is bounced back and forth between them (as shown in Figure 1), allowing for more time for the light to interact with the gas.

When you tweet and the Universe tweets back...

Engagement with the public is an important activity for us here at PVL. Many would think about this largely as a one-way street with scientists preparing materials for public consumption, such as a presentation, a documentary or a book. But it's always a richer experience when you're having a two-way conversation, as Christina describes in this week's Blog post. Sometimes the level of engagement displayed by that response can be surprising! Note that the photo above is a word cloud she made from some of the jobs respondents are currently doing (sizes randomly assigned).

By Dr. Christina L. Smith

 

One of the things I think is important as a scientist is making sure that not only the scientific community knows of your work (and general existance) but also that the wider public is able to engage with you and your research, when appropriate of course. As my previous posts (i.e. poetry in science and the Rover Exploration Challenge) show I particularly enjoy getting involved in public engagement in a variety of formats!

A couple of months ago, I was invited to give a presentation at a “Future Women in STEM” (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) day held at York University, talking about my personal experience as a woman in STEM. I realised that, although there were a large number of very interesting presentations and activities on the agenda, mine was the only one revolving around someone’s personal experience in a science field. I’m also very aware that STEM careers are far, far broader than my own personal experience.

Heiligenschein Throughout the Solar System

Greenler's 1980 classic "Rainbows, Haloes and Glories" is a must-read around our lab. I can remember being introduced to the book by my own PhD advisor, Peter Smith way back in 2003. It's still a useful and engaging tome, describing optical effects valid for atmospheres around any planet, and even some bodies without atmospheres! As for the photos above, they are annotated images of the Asteroid Ryugu, as Hyabusa 2 approaches (Images: JAXA), with arrows pointing to the area where Heiligenshein is observed.

by Brittney Cooper

Folks in the planetary community have been buzzing about the ongoing successes of JAXA’s Hayabusa 2 (http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/) over the last couple weeks – and with good reason! Even though it focuses on a solar system body that has no atmosphere (I’m kidding…sort of), it is still an exciting sample-return mission that features some great science, 2 adorable hopping rovers, a lander, and a real-time image downlink. 

When I was scrolling through the down-linked images of Hyabusa 2’s approach of Asteroid Ryugu, a familiar sight caught my attention (and the attention of those who share in my niche appreciation for scattering and optical effects). It wasn’t the spacecraft’s shadow resembling a Canadian flag (though I think we appreciated that as well), but rather, a brilliant heiligenschein.

A Successful Rover Exploration Challenge

In late July, PVL's "Rover Exploration Challenge*" came to the Ontario Science Center. There we shared a little bit of what we do in planetary space exploration with 400 members of the public over two days. Charissa (center of photograph), along with Christina, worked tirelessly to ensure the success of this event and we're already talking about repeating it next year! Look for our DPS abstract in a few weeks time which will describe what we learned from all of you in the course of designing and carrying out this simulation. And on a timely note, congrats to Charissa on the successful defense of her MSc thesis. I have updated her tag in this article accordingly.

By Charissa Campbell

Another day, another successful run of our outreach program for rover operations. With now four completed runs, we can successfully say that we have explored multiple styles of outreach. Our most recent run in late July (see Christina’s blog post: http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2018/07/rover-exploration-challenge-at-ontario.html) was labelled the Rover Exploration Challenge and was significantly different from previous runs. Located at the Ontario Science Centre, participants were visitors that were free to drop into the program during the start of every iteration or planning day. Multiple planning days were carried out, building off the previous iteration. This allowed multiple measurements to be taken throughout the rover’s traverse path. Both Saturday and Sunday’s runs had the same traverse path, but measurements differed based on the participants planning. 

A Somewhat Spontaneous Science Flash

Lately, Christina has been supporting the European & Pacific Divisions of the PVL with a series of four presentations at the IPM and EPSC conferences in Berlin, Germany and the MSL Science Team Meeting in Pasadena, California. Despite this heavy workload, she was able to take time to put together an entry into the EPSC Science Flash competition. While she didn't walk away with one of the grand prizes, twitter gave her an honourable mention for her engaging presentation! Details below.

by Dr. Christina Smith

At some conferences there are events held that host talks that are a little different to the standard conference-style oral presentation. I recently attended the European Planetary Sciences Congress in Berlin, and at this conference the Europlanet Early Career Network hosted Science Flash 2018.  Science Flash is a competition in which researchers are challenged to present their research in three minutes using only a single slide and doing it in an interesting or unusual way. I discovered the competition on the first day of the conference and decided to give it go less than three days later!

My unusual method for presenting my research was inspired by rhyming stories I used to read as a child. I wanted to present my work as if it were a rhyming children’s story whilst also giving accurate information and background to one of the projects I’ve been working on. So, what follows is what I said word for word and my slide is the picture you see above – and yes I did put a crown on Curiosity!

Water on Mars : A Brief History

RSL animated gif. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

Today, our newest MSc at PVL examines a large and well-known problem in planetary science: the water inventory of Mars and how we achieved the state of knowledge we now posses. Grappling with such big picture issues is as important for trainees as is the fine details of their own research.

By Brittney Cooper

The internet was recently abuzz with the latest results from the Mars Advanced Radar for Sub-Surface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument, as it returned evidence for a sub-surface lake near Mars’ south pole. Of course, that’s not how a lot of us saw it communicated in the news and on social media. It can be incredibly hard to distill intricate and niche scientific findings for the public’s palate, and often you see media outlets striving less to find that balance in favour of simply slapping on a sensationalist title and making sweeping assumptions.

A misleading headline that once again reared its ugly head in many publications was the age-old classic “Water Discovered on Mars!”. The important distinction with this newest discovery is that the water is “liquid”, and while making that distinction may seem like a small oversight, it makes a big difference when considering the geologic, atmospheric, and astro-biological ramifications. Furthermore, water has been known to exist on Mars in both gaseous and solid states  since the 1970s, and in 2015 scientists also claimed to have found salty liquid water on Mars’ surface in the form of recurring slope lineae (see photo above).

Lassonde Undergraduate Research Award

Romina is one of three undergraduates working in the lab this summer. She, like Alex holds a Lassonde Undergraduate Research Award (LURA) while Michael holds an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA). These funding sources are key for getting top undergraduates involved in research early in their careers, giving them a taste for what a graduate degree or a life in research might be like.

by Romina Bahrami

This summer I had the great opportunity to participate in research in the Planetary Volatiles Lab as an undergraduate student who just finished their first year of university. Doing research as an undergraduate student seems stupid and meaningless to many people and I can’t deny the lack of knowledge and experience as an undergraduate comparing to a graduate student; but I believe letting us work besides graduate students can act as an accelerator for us. Most people, including myself, who enter the science majors especially physics and astrophysics, have the intention to become a researcher one day while they know nothing about a researcher’s job or lifestyle. 

Rover Exploration Challenge at the Ontario Science Centre (July 28th and 29th 2018)

PVL is running a rover mission control simulation at the Ontario Science Center on July 28th and 29th. Everyone is invited to come, visit and participate as we explore a mystery planet! For more information, over to Dr. Christina Smith.
(Image taken from: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/mars-curiosity/en/ )

by Dr. Christina L. Smith

You may (or may not) have noticed that Mars is looking a little brighter than usual at the moment. And from July 27^th-30^th it will actually be the brightest it has been since 2003! Mars is currently approaching opposition where the Sun, the Earth, and Mars are all in alignment. This happens roughly every 26 months and this one will happen on July 27^th. Closely related to this is the closest approach of Mars to Earth – this time it happens four days later on July 31^st. To celebrate Mars’ proximity and opposition, a number of events are happening around Toronto (and beyond) this week to let you observe and learn about Mars and just generally bask in the glory of The Red Planet’s awesomeness.

As part of this, some members of the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory are putting on an event at the Ontario Science Centre this coming weekend (July 28^th and 29^th) called the Rover Exploration Challenge. This is a drop in event where participants can experience what it’s like to be part of a team trying to explore another planet. They’ll be divided up into three science groups, each of whom have a different set of science goals to achieve in a limited amount of Rover Science Time. Every Rover Day, lasting about half an hour, a different team will come in and will be given a Mission Briefing to show them what kind of science they can do. Afterwards, Science Leads will take them through everything we know so far relating to their science goals – what we know, what we don’t know, what they can do to help complete the mission.

The first decision the Mission Team will need to make is whether they want the rover to drive. Each drive allows the rover to explore a new area, but the rover can’t go back to explore a place it’s already been so they have to make sure they have done everything they might want to do before moving on!  Different Science Groups have different goals, which may influence whether or not they want to drive and in this team, democracy rules so if the majority says a drive is “Go!” then that’s what will happen. So if one group needs to stay put or needs to drive, they need to persuade the other science teams that that’s what they should vote for.

After the drive decision, the different Science Groups need to decide what they want to study and when during the Rover Day. There’s atmospheric measurements, water tests, ground tests, and imaging available to take with the rover, and different sites could be very different from one another so it’s important to test these at different locations along the Rover’s Exploration Path. After they’ve decided what they want the rover to do and put it into the Rover Plan, it’s time to check the plan, upload it to the rover, and wait for the results to come back. But there’s always an element of risk when using the rover: observations could fail, drives could fault, or the whole rover could shut down...

4 Things getting a Master’s Taught Me

PVL's newest minted Master, Tue Giang Nguyen, reflects on his time at PVL as he stands on the cusp of becoming a PhD Candidate in the group.

by Tue Giang Nguyen

As the summer passes by, I'm wrapping up the things I’ve done for my Master’s degree and hope to get a good start for my PhD. Although it has only been a short two years that I’ve spent in grad school, those years have been quite eventful. Now that I’m near the end of the tunnel, I can look back at some of the things I’ve learned hoping to impart wisdom onto the next generation of Master’s students, one blog post at a time. Below I will bestow to you a list of things I think that would help when looking to start a research-based Master’s degree (in no particular order).

Video Game provides opportunity for research on impactors

In his inaugural post, PVL Summer Undergraduate Michael Tabascio takes a look at a most unusual crater that appears in popular culture, on the map of the game "fortnite" as pictured above. As frequent readers of this space will appreciate, I think it's absolutely critical to bring the public along for the ride that is planetary exploration. As such, depictions of planetary processes like these offer a unique opportunity to connect our work with that public experience and to deepen the appreciation of both perspectives.

By Michael Tabascio

Fortnite is a hunger games style third person shooter has taken the world by storm, with the objective to be the last one alive by eliminating your opponents. It can be said with great assurance that Fortnite is the biggest game of the year, with the map evolving every couple months. Perhaps the most notable change came in May, when the map was struck by a meteor leaving a gigantic crater in the middle of the map. Using the dimensions of the crater, the direction and angle of the meteor, as well as the material of both the meteor and the ground beneath it, we can estimate what the size of the meteor was that hit the map.

Attending the 2018 CASI Conference

As you can see from the image above, Quebec City is truly a whimsical place. PhD student Jake reflects on his experiences in this eastern town while attending the CASI Conference in May.

By Jake Kloos

From May 15th to 17th of this year, I had the opportunity to attend the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (CASI) conference held in Quebec City, Quebec. A few other members of our lab also attended (Paul Godin, Alex Seguin, and John Moores), as did a number of other students in the Earth and Space Sciences department at York. As several attendees pointed out when I spoke with them, York University made up a sizeable contingent of the conference.

This was my second time attending CASI (the first time being in 2016), and my 7th conference overall during my tenure at York. Generally speaking, I enjoy attending conferences, and CASI this year was no exception. I enjoy travelling to new places and hearing about the latest research in aerospace and planetary science. And with each conference I attend, I feel a bit more comfortable standing in front of a crowd and presenting my own work and better able to scrutinize the work of others (as is healthy, and even necessary in science).  

Summer Conference Season – Round 2: TEPS!

A number of members of PVL just completed a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the annual TEPS Summer Skills Series, organized by Catherine Neish and Christa Van Laerhoven. My trainees tell me they did a wonderful job and reported a very intellectually exciting and collaborative time out west. I asked Alex (4th from right in the first row) to weigh in on his experiences at the conference.

By Alex Séguin

On May 29th, 2018, seven members of PVL participated in the NSERC CREATE Technology for Exoplanetary Science(TEPS) Summer Skills Conference at the University of British Columbia. The workshop brings together young researchers involved in planetary science, exoplanetary science, and space instrumentation to encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations and to expose students of one field to two other complementary ones. Spanning the course of three days, the event offered us six keynote speakers and gave TEPS trainees an opportunity to present their latest research and receive feedback from their peers. This summer, PVL’s presence consisted of Paul (PDF), Christina (PDF), Jake (PhD), Giang (PhD), Charissa (MSc), Brittney (MSc), and myself, Alex (UG).   

As students preparing ourselves to pursue a career in the space sector, it is always encouraging and helpful to observe established individuals already successful in the field. Such were TEPS’ keynote speakers, who not only showed us the type of work they perform, but also shared some useful tips on how to find our place in the industry. The first presenter was Dr. Jani Radebaugh (Brigham Young University) who discussed the significance of using Earth as a planetary analog and common pitfalls when doing so. She used geomorphological features found within the Solar System as examples; Sometimes, features are comparable while other times they only share a similar cosmetic appearance. 

Summer Conference Season

 

Judging by this photo I took in High Park a few weeks ago it would seem that spring has sprung here in Toronto. That can only mean that it is conference season! Paul has agreed tell you all about a few summer conferences we are supporting here at PVL.

by Dr. Paul Godin

Summer is typically considered a productive time for research on university campuses. With courses typically done, professors and students have more time to dedicate towards research. PVL has the addition of 3 undergrads working in the lab full time for the summer (plus one undergraduate volunteer). 

But it’s not just research that gets a boost during the summer months. Academic conferences to present our research are also more frequent in the summer. Attending conferences is a valuable part of academic life; it provides an opportunity to present your research and develop public speaking skills. But that’s not all: even if you’re not presenting your research conferences are a great opportunity to meet others working in your field, share ideas to help improve your research, and even discover employment opportunities.

“I’m not a student... not yet a professor”: but what actually IS a post-doc?

Usually I go with Grey's Anatomy references to explain academic ranks, hence the photo above, showing the season 1 cast. An intern (in Canada a 1st year resident - light blue above) is a bit like a PhD student just embarking on their research career, a resident is like a postdoc (light blue + lab coat) working with significant autonomy, each of whom works under an attending physician (dark blue above) who in turn takes their cues from the department chair (dark blue + lab coat). Here Christina takes a different tack.

By Dr. Christina Smith

Bonus points for anyone who gets the early 2000s song reference in the title there.

So this is a question I come across quite often – and I know other post-docs do too. When asked what I do for a living, I’ll often start with “I’m a researcher” for simplicity, but in reality I’m a “post-doctoral fellow” or even more confusingly, a “post-doctoral visitor”. There are a number of other names for people who do similar jobs to me, but they all tend to have the same word (or hyphenated word, but let’s not get onto the postdoctoral vs post-doctoral debate) at the beginning of the title, so often we just call ourselves “post-docs”.

But that doesn’t really answer the question: what is a post-doc?

2000 Sols on Mars: What Goes Into Documenting Another World?

The second in our two-part series on Curiosity's 2000th Sol on Mars. In this article Brittney takes a look at the public reaction to the day and reflects on choosing that perfect image to commemorate the occasion, in this case from an observation she herself designed, planned and ran on Mars! What goes into producing that top line image? Read on to find out. You can read the first article, written by Charissa Campbell and talking about operations, by clicking on this link.

By Brittney Cooper

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), better known as Curiosity Rover, celebrated its historic 2000^th sol on Mars last week. 2000 Martian days equates to roughly 3 Martian years, which has allowed the rover a great deal of time to traverse Gale Crater. Along the way, the science team has used MSL to analyze Mars’ geology, all the while monitoring the atmosphere and its processes as the seasons change each year.

To celebrate this historic occasion, the BBC published an article featuring a collection of images captured by the rover throughout its journey. It turned out that a triptych of images taken as part of an observation I proposed were selected to be included in the article. It was really cool to see them alongside others in such a large outlet. An unexpected (but positive) result of those images being published came in the form of discussions with friends and family about what my actual role was in the capture of those images.

Sol 2000: A day in the life of a Martian Explorer

This week we've got a double bill here at PVL. In dueling articles, two of our Mars Science Laboratory Collaborators, Brittney Cooper (at left in the image above) and Charissa Campbell (at center) reflect on Curiosity's 2000th martian day (or sol) on Mars. The third person pictured above is Christina Smith, PVL Postdoctoral fellow and fellow MSL Collaborator and ESTLK. Charissa kicks us off with a description of the day and is followed up by Brittney's article about how that beautiful image in the newspaper gets produced.

by Charissa Campbell

As of March 22, Curiosity celebrated her 2000^th day on Mars. I was lucky enough to be on operations during this monumental moment as some members of our research group are a part of the Environmental (ENV) Science Theme Group (STG) for Curiosity. This STG is responsible for the environmental side of operations, which includes advocating and planning observations beneficial to our research such as atmospheric movies. The official name for our role is the Environmental Science Theme Lead and Keeper of the Plan, or in a much manageable form, ESTLK.

Failing with Elegance

In the post below, Alex reflects on a frustrating problem in the lab. In many ways, our failures can be even more valuable than our successes, as they give us an opportunity to learn. Not to mention, as a mentor of mine once said, if you're not pushing into resistance and having problems then you aren't truly doing quality experimental science!

By Alexandre Séguin

Over the past semester, I have been working alongside Paul, Jake and John to set up a cryogenic vacuum chamber to emulate Moon-like conditions. I was assigned to a setup of a solenoid valve which controlled the flow of liquid nitrogen in the chamber. This subsystem includes the valve itself, a driver and a micro-controller. In short, the micro-controller reads a temperature input, determines whether the valve should open or close, and sends a signal to the driver which then activates the valve appropriately. Things did not go as smoothly as expected, and you will now have the opportunity to understand my thought process at the time. At the end, there will be a reflection on the lessons learned and the importance of handling frustrating situations well. Let’s get to work!

Managing the Undergrads

Let's hear it for the hardest working people in academia, our undergraduates! As a fun follow-on to Casey's previous post about the lab food chain, this week Elisabeth discusses the work that she has done with several undergraduates who volunteer with us at PVL to gain valuable experience and perhaps to prepare for future careers in research! From left to right, Alexandra Innanen, Abteen Sanaee, Romina Bahrami and Derek Hayden.

by Elisabeth Smith

Now that I’m in my final term of my Master’s degree, I am a very busy woman – I’m currently doing an astronomy research project for course credit, writing my thesis, and even starting to look around at employment opportunities. However, I still had a few experiments to conduct so I was able to recruit my very own mini-army of undergraduate assistants to help me out. 

Having an undergraduate assistant (or multiple, in my case) is very beneficial for both parties involved. As the graduate student, having an assistant to help perform experiments frees my time to focus on my thesis and other things necessary for the completion of my degree. For the undergraduate student, they gain valuable experience doing hands-on work – something that will doubtless be a boon to their future careers, whether that’s in industry or academia or anything else.

Analyzing the Laboratory Food Chain

I enjoy the food chain above because even though each organism is being eaten by the one above it, the arrows suggest that each organism instead becomes the one above it! That makes it a bit more like the academic food chain that Casey describes below. I must admit, I laughed at Casey's 'rightly so' comment in the 2nd paragraph.

By Casey Moore

During one of our recent meetings, our attention was brought to a 2006 comic by Jorge Cham, creator of the infamous PhD Comics (see the link).

This particular comic strip conveys the “laboratory food chain”, e.g. the fundamental hierarchy within academics. At the top of the food chain is the benevolent hand of god sending the funding program manager disguised as an angel towards a faculty member seated behind a monument of a desk. Said faculty member is being worshiped, rightly so, by a postdoc. In a dingy basement below, we see a PhD student pecking away at their computer and a Master’s student curled up in a ball (probably crying). And in the soil, below the basement dwelling graduate students, we see an earth worm with the title of undergraduate student.

We all poked fun at this comic, even though we have members from the majority of the laboratory food chain in our group (read: no funding program managers nor gods among us). While it is comical, it should be stated that everyone’s experience may vary.

I may have felt like an earth worm during my undergraduate years in the grand scheme of academia, but I attribute that to not partaking in research. I wish I had, but the opportunity never existed for me. The same, I believe, cannot be said for undergraduates at YorkU.

Will it run? (or: Important things to ask yourself when programming)

Last fall, PVL MSc Giang spent a productive term with Raymond Pierrehumbert's group at Oxford. In this post, he reflects on his experience from the perspective of a little distance as he looks forward to summing up his MSc work and assesses PhD opportunities. Above (planetary photojournal image PIA01111), a view of one of Io's forced atmospheric components - sodium - which contrasts with the volcanic emission and condensation of sulfur compounds that Giang modelled.

By Tue Giang Nguyen

While I was interning at the University of Oxford, I was involved in atmospheric modelling projects for exoplanets and grateful for working with prominent scientists in my field. As I returned home from the UK, I had briefly forgotten what Canadian winter was like and was promptly reminded as I stepped outside of the airport. Now that I have returned to York University, it is time to reminisce about the things I learned during my short 3-months stay at Oxford.

The atmospheric model I worked with started by recreating Andrew Ingersoll’s 1985 work on modelling the wind flow on Io. Useful assumptions, some more justified than the others, such as making sure the Ionian atmosphere is hydrostatically bound and neglecting Io’s rotation allowed for a simple one-dimensional model of the shallow wave equation. The gist of the dynamics in the model is that sulfur dioxide, abundant on Io’s surface, would sublimate or evaporate when illuminated by the Sun. The sublimated sulfur dioxide would then flow onto the nightside where it is much colder and the atmosphere would condense back onto the surface. This insight on thin and condensable atmospheres is useful for exoplanet research where tidally locked rocky planets would evaporate or sublimate volatiles on the dayside where they would condense on the colder nightside.

Ice on Mercury and the Moon: Why So Different?

 

 A comparison of the poles of Mercury and the Moon illustrates similarities and differences that PVL PhD Candidate Jake Kloos explores in this blog post. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory.

By Jake Kloos

The research I am conducting for my PhD pertains to the polar regions of the Moon, which have been active regions of study within the planetary science community for over half a century. For a variety of reasons, interest in the lunar polar regions is centered around the presence of volatile compounds, principally water ice. Ice deposits have been detected within permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), which are regions within impact craters near the poles that are permanently shielded from the Sun. Due to the lack of direct sunlight, temperatures within PSRs are extremely low, enabling them to trap, and potentially preserve, molecules such as water that are wandering about the surface. While ice has been detected within lunar PSRs, the concentrations that have been inferred from remote sensing observations appear to be unexpectedly low, at only a few percent by weight.

The low concentrations of ice found on the Moon is surprising given what we know about ice concentrations on the planet Mercury. Mercury and the Moon share certain key similarities that led many to predict that the two bodies would posses similar amounts of ice: both are considered “airless” bodies and host PSRs near the poles that exist within similar temperature regimes (although Mercury’s PSRs are slightly warmer). Despite this, ice appears to be abundant at the polar regions of Mercury, with inferred concentrations in the range of 50 to 100 % by weight. Moreover, radar data unambiguously show enhancements in nearly all of Mercury’s PSRs, whereas many PSR craters on the Moon lack similar radar enhancements. In fact, some of the lunar PSRs that do show radar enhancements are subject to debate, as some researchers feel that ice may not be the best explanation as to the cause of the enhanced signal. The large discrepancy in ice concentrations on the Moon and Mercury does raise the question: why?

Proposal Writing 101

A few weeks ago, PVL PDF Christina Smith helmed her first major proposal on a $600,000 project. In this post she describes her experience and how it compares to other writing and proposing activities she has led in the past. (Image: "Coffee and a big stack of data", missyleone, flickr)

By Dr. Christina Smith

An very important aspect of academia is proposal writing. These are documents which do pretty much exactly what they say on the tin: they propose research into something. There are many different kinds: proposals to use instruments, proposals for job positions, funding proposals, proposals to become parts of collaborations, proposals to get on missions, and many more. In the past I've written short proposals to try (sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully- that's just how it goes) to get time on telescopes and I've written ones to go with fellowship and job applications, but this last week I had my first experience of grant (funding) proposal writing which is an entirely different experience!

When you write a proposal that goes along with a job application or a fellowship application (full or partial funding for your job specifically), the proposal generally focuses on the project, the skills and experiences you have to complete it, and any relevant past work. This includes a general level of background information to set the scene, as not everyone who reviews this proposal will be a specialist in your area. You have to make sure that any person in your general discipline will, by reading your proposal alone, understand what it is you want to do, and almost more importantly, why. In addition to what you want to do and why, you have to prove to the reader that you are definitely capable of carrying out this project that you are proposing. This requires a fair bit of “blowing one's own trumpet” so-to-speak, but in a way that is backed up by evidence. So you have to describe what you've done in the past and also explain why that is relevant to what you're doing now.

Getting the Amazing Opportunity to do Outreach with the Ontario Science Center

As part of our work on the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science's ERA program, we've been developing innovative ways to communicate rover operations to the public. Earlier this month we tried out a test of one of our events at the Ontario Science Center. Leading the charge was PVL MSc Charissa Campbell.

by Charissa Campbell

In my opinion, science outreach is one of the most important aspects of any public program. You get to teach people of all ages and can even encourage them to pursue science as a career. So, when our research group first discussed putting together an outreach program for high school students that would be like mission operations for a Martian rover, I was immediately on-board. Some of us are currently members of Curiosity’s mission operations team (including myself) so it was great to take that knowledge and adapt it. I’ve personally engaged in outreach programs in the past and still do on a regular basis with my young siblings, so I was excited to also be a part of this, especially in more of a leadership role. 

If you are curious about our May 2017 outreach program, you can check out Brittney’s great blog post: http://york-pvl.blogspot.ca/2017/05/analog-rover-missions-more-than-just.html. This was only the first of two successful runs in 2017 with varying levels of complexity. We knew changes had to be made from the first run, so we decided to broaden the roles and meetings to ensure participants didn’t get lost in the complexity. This did not, however, fix all of the issues from the first run.  Instead, we now had the opposite problem: the roles had become too broad. In the end, we identified the major problems with the program and made edits averaging the first and second run. Now in 2018, we have successfully completed a third run with volunteers at the Ontario Science Centre.

How to make your own moon

In the first installment of 2018, our resident experimental PDF discusses retrofitting our planetary simulation cryovacuum chamber to simulate a nearby environment: that found in the permanently shadowed regions of our own moon. An image of our first run can be seen above.

By Dr. Paul Godin

One of the experiments happening at the PVL is called the Aniu Investigation, which has the goal of testing to see if frost could be detected in shadowed regions of the moon using reflected starlight (Lyman-alpha radiation, 121 nm). Unfortunately, the moon is quite far away from York University and expensive to get to, so we’ll need to simulate the moon in the lab.

To build a moon in the lab we’ll need the following “ingredients”:

1.     A stainless-steel vacuum chamber.

2.     A vacuum pump.

3.     Liquid nitrogen.

4.     A “cold finger” heat exchanger

5.     Simulated lunar regolith

6.     A UV lamp.

Once we have all the above we can start building our moon. First, is to attach the vacuum pump to the vacuum chamber. The pump will remove the air from the chamber, allowing us to simulate the vacuum of space. Pumping out the air also has some other benefits from an experimental side; the lack of air in the chamber increases its thermal stability since there’s no longer a medium in which heat can be conducted/convected through the chamber. This means that temperature fluctuations in the lab are unlikely to be felt inside the chamber. A second benefit is air absorbs Lyman-alpha radiation quite strongly, meaning if we left the air inside the chamber the “starlight” would be absorbed before it even hit the surface of our moon.