AST Colloquium -- Interplanetary Dust: the view from near and far

Interplanetary Dust: the view from near and farDr. Andrew PoppeAssistant Research Scientist, Space Sciences LaboratoryUniversity of California at BerkeleyAbstract:Interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) are present throughout the solar system and provide a key connection to fundamental planetary building blocks. IDPs are produced via several processes, including asteroidal disruption, cometary outgassing, and grain-grain mutual collisions. IDPs originate from several parent sources such as the asteroid belt, comets, active Centaurs, and Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects. In this talk, Dr. Poppe will touch on new results from the New Horizons Student Dust Counter, which has measured IDP fluxes across the solar system from Earth to approximately 45 astronomical units. He will also discuss an on-going study for "Interstellar Probe" (IP), a mission concept whose ultimate scientific goal is to explore the interstellar space surrounding our heliosphere.Speaker Bio:Dr. Andrew R. Poppe is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. Andrew specializes in the study of interplanetary dust dynamics, the solar wind, and interplanetary plasma. Andrew has worked on instruments carried by many space missions, including the New Horizons probe to Pluto and the LADEE and ARTEMIS missions to the Moon.