November 2018
Issue 86
Awards in
Light Scattering
Dear Colleagues,
This is a friendly reminder
that one 2019
Waterman award and one 2019 Goody award will be presented at the 18th Electromagnetic and Light
Scattering Conference, 9-14 June 2019, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou
city, Zhejiang province, China.
Both awards are intended to
celebrate outstanding contributions by early-career scientists.
The calls for nominations can
be found at https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/mmishchenko/ELS-XVIII/
The nomination deadline has
been extended to 15 December 2018.
Please consider nominating an
outstanding young colleague for one of these awards.
Best regards,
Michael Mishchenko
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NASA Postdoctoral Program
Opportunity
Solar System Exploration:
Optical Scattering Investigations of Environments around Airless Bodies
Opportunity ID 19194
Opportunity URL https://npp.usra.edu/opportunities/details/?ro=19194
Location: Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
Field of Science: Planetary
Science
Advisor: Timothy
Stubbs, Primary Advisor, timothy.j.stubbs@nasa.gov
Citizenship Requirement
(1) U.S. Citizens Accepted
(2) Lawful Permanent Residents
Accepted
(3) Foreign Nationals Accepted
- Note: At this time, GSFC does not accept NPP applications from citizens
of designated countries unless they are Legal Permanent Residents of the U.S.
The Designated Countries List is available
at http://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/nasaecp/
Description
Observations and analysis of
faint light scattering by dust, aerosols and gas near airless bodies provides
insight into ejection and transport processes common to these objects. This
includes the Moon, the moons of Mars, the giant planet satellites and active
(mass shedding) asteroids. An explanation for the putative horizon
glow above the Moon detected during the Apollo era remains
elusive, but could perhaps have been sunlight scattered by ejecta from
meteoroid impacts. Evidence for the lunar ejecta cloud measured by LDEX may be
present in the data sets of optical instruments on the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter (LRO), especially the LAMP FUV spectrograph, but no systematic search
has been carried out. Analysis of multi-color limb imaging data from the
upcoming OSIRIS-REx encounter with asteroid Bennu could reveal the composition and
scale of dust plumes from natural impacts, as well as the artificial plume
created during the touch-and-go (TAG) sampling event.
To accomplish these research
objectives, the candidate applies existing radiative transfer codes, and
simulates the optical scattering of sunlight by dust and aerosols, as well as
neutral gas line emission from UV to infrared wavelengths. Dust modeling tasks
will incorporate the scattering behavior of spherical and non-spherical grains
with varying size and shape, as well as the spectral absorption of ice
aerosols. A library of grain scattering properties presently exists at GSFC,
but this will need to be expanded to larger grain sizes and greater diversity
of mineralogies. Some
understanding of the optical design of cameras and spectrometers, as well as
principles of radiometry and photometry, will be necessary for interpreting
existing data sets and making predictions about upcoming observations.