Jani Radebaugh will lead a tour of the outer solar system at this year’s Alice Louise Reynolds Women-in-Scholarship Lecture, “Encounters at the Edge of the Solar System: Exploring Jupiter, Saturn, and Beyond,” Friday, Nov. 21, at 2 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee Library auditorium at Brigham Young University.
As a planetary scientist, Radebaugh primarily researches Saturn's moon Titan, Jupiter's moon Io and Earth’s own moon. Her presentation will include NASA images and data generated from the Cassini spacecraft, now on its way to Saturn, and the New Horizons spacecraft, now on its way to Jupiter.
“Cassini continues to return spellbinding images of Saturn’s vast and relatively razor-thin rings, water-spewing icy moons and paradoxically Earth-like terrains of its largest moon Titan,” said Radebaugh about her presentation. “When New Horizons arrives at the edge of the Kuiper Belt in 2015, we will finally understand what puts the ‘plutoids’ at the kiddie table while the planets keep their banquet.”
Radebaugh earned her doctorate in planetary science at the University of Arizona in 2005 after graduating with degrees in physics and geology from BYU. She is a member of many societies for planetary science and serves on the steering committee for the Outer Planets Assessment Group, a NASA advisory panel.
The Alice Louise Reynolds Women-in-Scholarship Lecture was established to honor Alice Louise Reynolds, who served on the committee that provided the beginnings of the Harold B. Lee Library. She devoted many years to the realization of her dream for a large, comprehensive university research library at BYU. The effects of her unselfish service are still felt at the Harold B. Lee Library and at BYU.
For more information, contact Roger Layton, Harold B. Lee Library communications manager, at (801) 422-6687 or roger_layton@byu.edu, or Jani Radebaugh, assistant professor of geology, at (801) 422-9127 or jani.radebaugh@byu.edu.
Writer: April Chalk
