Morehead Planetarium and Science Center

Magic Tree House Space Mission
2022-11-26 10:30 - 11:30, 2022-12-03 10:30 - 11:30, 2022-12-10 10:30 - 11:30 (America/New_York) | GSK Fulldome Theater

Galileo: The Power of the Telescope
2022-11-26 12:00 - 13:00 | GSK Fulldome Theater

We Are Stars
2022-11-26 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-12-03 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-12-10 13:30 - 14:30 | GSK Fulldome Theater

The Longest Night: A Winter’s Tale
2022-11-26 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-11-27 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-12-03 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-12-04 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-12-10 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-12-11 15:00 - 16:00 | GSK Fulldome Theater

Carolina Skies
2022-11-26 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-11-27 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-12-03 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-12-04 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-12-09 15:00 - 16:00, 2022-12-10 16:30 - 17:30, 2022-12-11 16:30 - 17:30 | GSK Fulldome Theater

Solar System Odyssey
2022-11-27 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-12-04 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-12-11 13:30 - 14:30 | GSK Fulldome Theater

Take Flight
2022-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 | GSK Fulldome Theater

UNC Research Spotlight with Tamlin Pavelsky: The NASA SWOT Mission
2022-12-05 10:00 - 11:00 | Morehead Planetarium and Science Center Science Stage, 250 E Franklin St, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27514, United States
NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography Satellite: A New Eye in the Sky for Earth’s Water

Water is perhaps the single most important resource for humans and naturals systems. In the form of floods, it also drives the most destructive category of natural disasters worldwide. Despite its clear importance, there is a huge amount we do not know about where our water is and how it is changing. In this public talk, Dr. Tamlin Pavelsky will tell us about how NASA and collaborators around the world have developed a new satellite, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, that will give us an unprecedented global picture of the world’s river flow, lake water storage, and ocean circulation. SWOT is scheduled to launch this December, representing the culmination of more than 15 years of work by scientists and engineers. We will explore both the cutting-edge science that SWOT will accomplish and the long process that led to the development of this $1B satellite.

Dr. Tamlin Pavelsky is a professor of global hydrology in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his PhD in geography from UCLA in 2008. His dissertation focused on using remote sensing, field measurements, and large datasets to understand how the water cycle in northern environments varies in space and time. In 2009, Dr. Pavelsky was hired as an assistant professor at UNC. His teaching has focused on remote sensing, water resources, and hydrology, while his research has focused on understanding the global distribution of water in rivers, lakes, and mountain snowpack using satellite imagery, field measurements, and regional climate models. Since 2013, Dr. Pavelsky has served as the hydrology science lead for the NASA Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission. For his work leading the surface water community towards solutions for measuring river flow from space, Dr. Pavelsky was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest award given by the U.S. government to early career researchers. He grew up in central Alaska in cabins without electricity or running water.

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Earth, Moon and Sun
2022-12-09 13:30 - 14:30, 2022-12-16 13:30 - 14:30 | GSK Fulldome Theater

Teen Science Cafe: From the Rainforest to the UN: How Science Informs Climate Change Policy
2022-12-09 17:30 - 19:00 | Morehead Planetarium Fulldome Theater, 250 E Franklin St, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27514, United States
Professor Angel Hsu found herself in the lowland jungles of Costa Rica while studying abroad the summer after her freshman year at Wake Forest University, experiencing the beauty of glass tree frogs and sound of howler monkeys, but wondering, “What good is the science I’m discovering, if global warming and deforestation eventually lead to the demise of the rain forest?” This question motivated her to study climate change policy when she returned to the classroom. In this interactive talk, Prof. Hsu will talk about how science informs policy, drawing on her experience at the frontlines of international climate change policy.

About the speaker: Angel Hsu is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and the Environment, Ecology and Energy Program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is the Founder and Principal Investigator of Data-Driven EnviroLab, an interdisciplinary group that uses emerging technologies and data-driven approaches to solve problems related to climate change policy. Angel previously held appointments at Yale-NUS college in Singapore as Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and was also the lead author of the 2018 UNEP Emissions Gap report chapter on non-state actors and an author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. Angel holds a PhD in Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale University, an M Phil in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Biology and BA in Political Science from Wake Forest University.

Star Families: Be an Astronaut
2022-12-10 12:00 - 13:00 | GSK Fulldome Theater

Skywatching: Geminid Showers
2022-12-13 20:00 - 22:00 | Little River Regional Park, 301 Little River Park Way, Rougemont, North Carolina, 27572, United States
One of the best meteor showers of the year – the Geminid meteor shower — will next peak on Tuesday, December 13, 2022.

Morehead Planetarium and Science Center and Little River Regional park will host a free skywatching event.

Learn about meteors and more! For example, did you know meteors, sometimes misleadingly called “shooting stars,” are streaks of light caused by cosmic debris interacting with Earth’s atmosphere. Typically, this debris has been left by a comet. In the case of the Geminids, the source is an asteroid, 3200 Phaethon.

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