Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2023

It was amazing to see everyone in person again this year at LPSC 2023. It was the first time I had been to a conference in person since the pandemic. Even though people wore masks and everything appeared to be relatively safe, still a number of people came down with a COVID infection. (To my knowledge, must cases were mild. Although I didn’t hear about anything serious, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t.)

I put a lot of work into two poster presentations of my own and contributed to others as well. Fieldwork in Hawaii yielded some pretty impressive results from an experiment that I designed, built and tested. Here’s a link to the abstract and some cool 360 degree panospheres inside the lava tubes at Mauna Loa!

Ultraviolet-Induced Fluorescence (UVIF) Imaging Experiment Results

Work on mapping fluvial systems on Alba Mons has progressed well and is probably coming to a close. I presented results from that study and preliminary results from Amphitrites Patera. Here’s a link to our abstract and a nice write up on PSI’s website.

Perspective view of a hill shade topographic model of Alba Mons, Mars looking from the northeast. A map of interpolated drainage density is projected. The darker the blue color, the higher the concentration of mapped valley networks. Hopefully publishing these results soon…

RISE2 Field Campaign Kilbourne Hole, NM 2022

RISE2 Field Campaign to Kilbourne Hole, NM 2021

Field Campaign in Iceland 2021

Capturing Aerial Images from UAVs in Iceland 2019

Science, Art and Engineering

My main function: analyze geospatial data on the computer. The data show images looking down at Earth and Mars and are interesting to look at: lava flows, sand dunes, river channels, mountains. These are valuable to science, but the patterns and abstractness have artistic value. Many people recognize this and celebrate this by contributing to The Art of Planetary Science Exhibition in Tucson, AZ. There were many submissions from almost a hundred artists, and I’m happy to be one this year in 2018. I carved a HiRISE DTM, my first completed 3D carve of topography. I’m happy with the way it turned out!

Description of Piece: A place on Mars in miniature Fissure and Channel Southeast of Olympus Mons. Carved by a homemade computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine; surface tone painted by hand. Image data were provided by The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera in orbit around Mars, which were processed into a digital terrain model by the HiRISE Science Team.

RIS4E Field Campaign Aden Volcanic Field, NM 2017

Iceland Field Campaign 2016

I have to admit: Flying an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) such as the Trimble UX5-HP is a lot easier than flying a kite over lava flows. We covered several square kilometers in no time with this bird! There were two location: the south of Iceland (the Laki lava flow) and in the north of Iceland (the Holuhraun lava flow). We worked with a great group of students in the field participating in the Keck Geology Consortium. They helped us run our mobile UAV airport! I’ll post more details about our field work and the student projects soon. For now, here are a few images of us doing our volcanological mapping. The data will result in orthoimage data at 1-4 cm per pixel, and digital terrain models at 10 cm per pixel!