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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Photo of Laura Danly

Monday, November 13, 2017 / 3:30 PM, Building 8 Auditorium

Laura Danly

"An Animated Universe: Visual Storytelling and the Search for Life"

ABSTRACT -- A new planetarium show under development at Griffith Observatory explores themes related to the story of life in the universe. The script asks whether life on Earth is a fluke, or whether it is an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and chemistry that govern the universe. We examine Earth and its diverse environments, and show how a planet and its life evolve together. We describe what we have learned about life on Earth recently and how that informs us about what we might look for beyond Earth. We illustrate how the present generation of space missions is finding habitable worlds in our solar system. We show the explosion in the number of planets discovered beyond Earth, how we study them, and how one day, perhaps soon, we might find signs of life on one of them.

Signs Of Life is Illustrated with vivid, immersive, computer generated imagery that will be shared with the public through our recently-acquired 8Kx8K, 60 frames per second projection system on the 75' dome of Griffith Observatory's Samuel Oschin Planetarium. We have worked closely with members of the scientific community, especially from the Cassini and Juno missions and the Mars Exploration Program, to create the most accurate visualizations to date. There is still very much to do, and there are opportunities for future collaborations, for those who might be interested.

SPEAKER -- Dr. Laura Danly is the Curator of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. Since her arrival at Griffith Observatory upon its reopening in 2006, she has developed and implemented the Observatory's educational, planetarium, gallery, telescope, and theatre programs. In particular, Dr. Danly has produced, directed, and co-written four of Griffith Observatory's most recent programs in the Samuel Oschin Planetarium. Recently Dr. Danly oversaw the renovation of all the technical systems in the planetarium theatre.

Dr. Danly got her PhD from the University of Wisconsin where she specialized in ultraviolet spectroscopy. She then spent ten years at the Space Telescope Science Institute (ST ScI) where she was a post-doctoral and Hubble Fellow conducting research with the Hubble Telescope (1987-1997). After her post-docs, she joined the scientific staff as ST ScI's first Project Scientist for Education. Dr. Danly left ST ScI NASA in 1997 to take academic appointments as a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Denver, the first Curator of Space Science at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and the first Chair of their new Space Sciences Department. Dr. Danly then moved to New York City where she was the Senior Manager of Astrophysics Education at the American Museum of Natural History (2004-2006). Dr. Danly has appeared in numerous broadcast science and astronomy programs, and has served on advisory boards to the White House and NASA.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov