STARMUS Lecture in Brno: Lucy in the Sky! The First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids

Lecturer: Dr. Joel Parker
(Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), University of Colorado, USA)

In English

Admission is free, due to the capacity of the room, we ask participants to pre-register HERE.

Joel Parker – Astrophysicist

Joel Parker is a world-renowned astrophysicist who studies hot massive stars in neighboring galaxies, solar system objects such as comets, the Moon, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects.

Dr. Joel Parker is a Director in the Boulder office of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Professor Adjoint at the University of Colorado. He worked at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center studying hot, massive stars in neighboring galaxies, and at SwRI his projects have involved research of solar system objects such as comets, the Moon, asteroids, and trans-Neptunian objects. He has made observations at ground-based observatories around the world as well as with space-based telescopes including the International Ultraviolet Explorer spacecraft, the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope that flew aboard the Space Shuttle, and for the past 29 years with the Hubble Space Telescope for over two dozen projects ranging from one of the first known interstellar comets to other galaxies and their stars that are over a hundred times the mass of our Sun. He was a Principal Investigator for the Alice ultraviolet spectrograph instrument on the Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and the project manager for similar spectrographs on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt. Dr. Parker also is a science team member and Assistant Project Scientist on New Horizons and the manager of the Science Operations Center for NASA's Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids. He is editor of the "Distant EKOs" Kuiper belt newsletter, is an actor and musician, and is a producer and host for the science show "How on Earth" on radio station KGNU.