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SPRING 2008 CIPS SEMINAR SERIES
Organizer: Mate Adamkovics

• May 14: Xander Tielens, University of Gronigen & NASA Ames
  "Building planets one grain at a time"

12:00 noon- 1:00 pm
Campbell Hall #544

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COURSE OFFERING Fall 2008
Astro 162 / EPS 162:
Solar System Astrophysics
Instructor: Imke de Pater
Time & Location: TBA

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COURSE OFFERING Fall 2008
Astro 250/ EPS 290 Graduate Seminar:
Meteorites and the Solar System
Instructor: Imke de Pater / Anna Butterworth
MW 11-1pm
365 McCone Hall

Course format: Two hours per week including up to 1 hour lecture plus 1 hour discussion and/or hands-on interaction with meteorites.
Description: This multidisciplinary course discusses what we have learned about the Solar System from laboratory studies of meteorites and how these studies are complimentary to observations of asteroids, planets and other solar systems. After a short introduction about the different meteorite types, and their chemical, mineralogical and isotopic composition, we will discuss their links to asteroids, comets, Mars and the Moon. In the second part we will discuss how meteorite studies have constrained the age of the Solar system, the formation history of asteroids, and the delivery of meteorites from the asteroid belt to Earth. This part will also include lunar and martian chronology and the role of short-lived radionuclides in the early solar system. Finally, we will discuss preliminary results from the two recent sample return missions from the Solar Wind (Genesis) and comet Wild 2 (Stardust), and review what questions remain to be answered. In the last week, we’ll tour some of the labs (ALS, SSL), where these studies are performed.