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Heliosphere subject of final Astronomy Days lecture at museum

The sixth in the Bradbury Science Museum's Astronomy Days series of talks is at 7 p.m., tonight when Herb Funsten of the Center for Space Science and Exploration (ISR-CSSE) discusses "The Heliosphere." The talk will provide an overview of the heliosphere and its interactions with the solar system and the local interstellar medium.

Funsten is the director of ISR-CSSE at Los Alamos. Funsten joined the Lab as a post-doctoral fellow in 1990 and became a staff member in 1993. He is a member of the instrument teams on NASA's Cassini, IMAGE, TWINS and Mars Odyssey missions. As a lead instrument investigator on the Department of Energy's SAVE payload, he holds four patents and three patents pending on mass spectrometry and detection technologies.

Astronomy Days and its lectures help support the Laboratory's hosting of the Earthwatch Institute's Student Challenge Awards Program entitled "Transient Phenomena in Astrophysics." The program brings eight high-school students from around the country to Los Alamos for two weeks to be exposed to aspects of research in astrophysics.

The Bradbury Science Museum is part of the Public Affairs Office. It is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in Los Alamos. Museum hours, apart from the special events, are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 5 p.m., Saturday, Sunday and Monday. There is no admission fee to attend museum events.

For more information, call Pat Berger at the museum at 5-0896.

--Brenna Moore

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