Justin Deighan
University of Colorado, Boulder
Dr. Justin Deighan received his BS in Physics from The College of William and Mary in 2007, and his PhD in Engineering Physics from the University of Virginia in 2012. He currently holds the position of Research Scientist III at the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder. He first joined LASP as a post-doc on NASA’s MAVEN mission as part of the science team for its IUVS instrument and currently serves as a Deputy Principal Investigator for the mission. Dr. Deighan is also the Deputy Science Lead for the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) mission and the Science Lead of its EMUS instrument. His specific topics of research in planetary science include airglow and aurora, photochemistry, energy and mass transport, and atmospheric escape. His work includes designing spacecraft observations and analyzing collected data, developing theoretical models to support scientific understanding, and characterizing performance of scientific instrumentation. He was a recipient of the NASA Early Career Achievement Award in 2018.
Presentation Title:
Ultraviolet Mars: The Search for More Science
Abstract:
Tremendous new insights into the Martian atmosphere have been achieved in recent years by two ultraviolet spectrographs built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder: the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) aboard the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, and the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) aboard the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM). Both instruments have far exceeded their design goals in science return, with results ranging from tracking polar cyclones that form daily to making the first videos of aurora at Mars. This has been accomplished in part through opportunistic and innovative observations not in the original concept of operations. In this talk I will give a high-level summary of how we observe Mars in the ultraviolet and share several examples of ground-breaking experiments that these instruments were not quite designed to perform.
Organization Page
- Fields
- SYM-2026