Public talk - Getting inside the Aurora

Professor James Labelle
University of Sydney International Visiting Research Fellow
and Professor of Physics and Astronomy,
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA

The Southern Lights, or Aurora, dance in the sky above Antarctica, occasionally reaching Tasmania and, on rarer occasions, New South Wales. What causes these flickering lights to appear in the sky and move the way they do?

We have been studying Aurorae for more than a century, but we still have much to learn. However the addition of rocket- and satellite-based instruments to measurements from the ground has opened new horizons in our quest to understand the complex plasma that inhabits our upper atmosphere.

Aside from being fascinating and beautiful Physics, the study of the Aurora has real implications for the reliability of many of our satellite-based communications and GPS systems, as physicists begin to understand and forecast space weather.

Come to this fully illustrated public lecture and find out what the Aurora is all about from a scientist who flies rockets loaded with scientific instruments through the ionosphere as it glows and shimmers with Auroral activity.

Photo left: A rocket laden with scientific apparatus takes off, bound for an active aurora. Photo courtesy of Chuck Johnson.

Professor James LaBelle really is a rocket scientist, at Dartmouth College, USA. He studied physics and applied physics at Stanford and Cornell Universities in the USA. He worked on experimental Space Physics at several laboratories in the USA and Germany before joining the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1989.

He leads a team of scientists and engineers making rocket- and ground-based measurements of aurorae in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, and is visiting the School of Physics under their Denison distinguished visitor scheme during March, April and May.

Date: Thursday May 15th, 2008

Time: 6.30 – 7.30 PM

Venue: Slade Lecture Theatre, ground floor, School of Physics

RSVP: outreach@physics.usyd.edu.au or 9351 3383