The LRO Diviner Science Team will host a public Diviner Data Users Forum on Sunday, March 17 from 3 to 5pm in the College Park Room at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel in Houston, TX. The purpose of the forum will be to acquaint the community with Diviner’s new high-level mapped data products. These products include global maps of brightness temperature, solar reflectance, composition and thermophysical properties.  This extensive new dataset will be made available via the NASA PDS Geosciences Node on June 15, 2013. The forum will also provide an opportunity for potential users to ask questions and provide feedback to the team. This is a public meeting and all are invited.

Forum Agenda:

3:00 pm - Dataset Overview and Level 1 Data Products - D. A. Paige (UCLA)
3:20 pm - Foundation Level 1 Data Product - K. M. Aye (UCLA)
3:40 pm - Standard Gridded Data Products (Part 1 | Part 2) - J. P. Williams (UCLA) and B. T. Greenhagen (JPL)
4:20 pm - Foundation Level 2 Gridded Data Products - E. Sefton-Nash (UCLA)
4:40 pm - Questions and Discussion (All)

During UCLA’s Explore Your Universe outreach event, science research groups and departments from across campus share their research with the public through hands-on demonstrations and experiments aimed at students from “K through gray”.

The Diviner exhibit included animations of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launch and journey to the Moon, a lunar tour, and the LCROSS impact.  An infrared camera allowed members of the public to learn why their cars heat up when left out in the sun and how infrared cameras can see things our eyes can’t.  For more information about the event and to see more pictures and video, visit the UCLA Institute for Planets and Exoplanets.

Elliot Sefton-Nash explains the infrared camera to interested onlookers.

Michael Aye discusses his research at the Diviner outreach exhibit during UCLA's Explore Your Universe event.

Members of the public learn about the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Diviner experiment.

Thanks to Diviner team members Paul Hayne, Raquel Nuno, Michael Aye, Elliot Sefton-Nash, and Michaela Shopland for volunteering their time!

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, four Diviner team members estimate the abundance of iron oxide (FeO) at the sites of several volcanic deposits on the Moon’s surface.

Determining the distribution of iron oxide on the lunar surface may hold important clues about the Moon’s geologic history and may also provide an important inventory of lunar resources for future human exploration endeavors.

Billions of years ago, geologic activity on the Moon launched magma from the surface, allowing small bead-like pieces of volcanic glass to solidify in midair. Eons later, Apollo astronauts collected soil samples containing these translucent projectiles and returned them to Earth for analysis. Colored primarily orange, black, and green, the bits of volcanic ejecta are rounded and each about the width of a human hair.

By measuring the thermal properties of lunar samples in an Earthbound laboratory, first-author Carlton Allen developed conclusions about data taken from lunar orbit by the Diviner experiment, onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. To calibrate the spacecraft’s measurements, Allen compared Diviner spectral signatures to the compositions of soils from Apollo landing sites.

Of the three volcanic deposits Allen analyzed, two were rich in iron oxides and volcanic glasses (regions named Aristarchus and Sulpicius Gallus), while the third was not (a region called Rima Fresnel).

Additional authors of this study include researchers Benjamin Greenhagen, Kerri Donaldson Hanna, and David Paige.

To learn more about this study, read the original paper.

Diviner team members Jean-Pierre Williams and Emily Foote presented research at the European Planetary Science Congress last week in Madrid, Spain.  Watch as they explain their research in just 60 seconds!

Pierre and Emily Explain their Research in 60 Seconds

The LRO Diviner Science Team will host a public Diviner Data Users Forum on on Sunday, March 18 from 1.30-3pm. The meeting will be located in the Panther Creek conference room of the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel & Convention Center, 1601 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands, Texas 77380. The purpose of the forum will be to acquaint the community with Diviner’s latest high-level mapped data products. These products include global maps of brightness temperature, solar reflectance, composition, rock abundance and thermophysical properties. The forum will also provide an opportunity for potential users to ask questions and provide feedback to the team. Attendance is open to the public.

Agenda

1:30 Diviner Experiment and Dataset Overview (D. Paige)
1:45 Diviner Level 2 Data Products (J. P. Williams)
2:00 Diviner Level 3 Data Products (B. Greenhagen)
2:10 Demo of PDS, ARCGIS, JMoon and LMMP Data Access
2:30 Diviner Foundation Datasets (D. Paige)
2:45 Questions and Discussion (All)

The 365 Days of Astronomy Project has had a single mission since it was started during the International Year of Astronomy, 2009: publish one podcast per day, 5 to 10 minutes in duration, for all 365 days of 2009. The tradition has continued throughout 2010 and 2011, and today Dr. Ben Greenhagen, deputy principal investigator for the Diviner Lunar Radiometer, gave an interview detailing the mission, and the exciting results gathered so far. To listen to the interview go to: http://365daysofastronomy.org/2011/11/20/november-20th-how-cold-is-the-moon/

The LRO Diviner Science Team will host a public Diviner Data Users Forum on Sunday, March 6 from 1 to 2:30 pm in the Waterway 4 Ballroom at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel in Houston TX. The purpose of the forum will be to acquaint the community with Diviner’s new high-level mapped data products. These products include global maps of brightness temperature, solar reflectance, composition and thermophysical properties.  This extensive new dataset will be made available via the NASA PDS Geosciences Node on March 15, 2011. The forum will also provide an opportunity for potential users to ask questions and provide feedback to the team. This is a public meeting and all are invited.

More information

Diviner data are once again in the news - the latest research using Diviner’s temperature measurements - this time to derive rock abundance, has been featured in a news article in Nature. The results were presented last week at NASA’s Lunar Science Forum by participating scientist Joshua Bandfield.

Young, rocky Tycho Crater stands out because rocks retain heat longer than the surrounding regolith.

Today is the first anniversary of the successful activation of Diviner. The instrument has made 42 billion observations during its first year of operation, including 11 observations of the earth, 2 eclipses, the LCROSS impact and the coldest temperature measured anywhere in our Solar System… Not bad for a toddler!

Team members celebrated today with a well earned slice of ice cream cake. Happy 1st Birthday Diviner!

Principal Investigator David Paige and team members gather to celebrate the one year anniversary of Diviner's successful activation