At the heart of nearly all the large galaxies astronomers believe there are supermassive black holes. They may actually drive galaxy evolution. Scientists in Arkansas have been studying these black holes and their work has attracted considerable attention from the media. In the last few days, they learned that their research would be supported with a major grant. The total amount of the award is $1,400,000, with half of it coming from NASA and half coming from the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority.

The team, led by Dan Kennefick consists of Marc Siegar, Julia Kennefick, and Claud Lacy. All are faculty in the Physics department, Dan, Julia and Claud at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and Marc at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. All are members of the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences who brought the group together and supported the preparation of the successful proposal.

On advice from the National Academies of Science, NASA has identified the need to perform a census of black holes throughout the Universe as a means of understanding how the galaxies and the Universe evolve with time.

The research team will employ new techniques to estimate the masses of a large number of galaxies by exploiting a relation that they discovered between spiral arm structure and the mass of the supermassive black holes in the center of spiral galaxies. The technique will make use of the extensive archive of deep images provided by NASA space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, the team will use spectroscopic techniques to estimate the mass of supermassive black holes in quasars, and infrared and X-ray techniques to look for evidence of binary supermassive black holes in galaxies where the birth of large numbers of hot bright stars indicates a fairly recent galactic merger. The collaboration has discovered four candidate galaxies which may contain supermassive black hole binaries.

Since this is a university team, they will involve graduate and undergraduate students in all aspects of the work.

Members of the team recently attended the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis where this work attracted a great deal of interest resulting in a press conference and worldwide publication in USA Today, National Geographic, Astronomy magazine, Science News and the BBC Sky at Night.

The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program is an interdisciplinary summer program. This ten week program brings students from a variety of science and engineering backgrounds to the U of A campus to research topics in space and planetary sciences. 

The students are assigned mentors in their respective research areas, and the students get a chance to experience life as a graduate student.  REU student research interests vary from quasar astronomy to water on Mars.  The students also create midterm posters, participate in end of term orals, and attend a follow-up conference.

The students go on several field trips throughout the summer that reflect the major disciplines in the Space Center (planetary astronomy, planetary atmospheres, planetary geology, orbital mechanics and astronautics, or origin and evolution of life).  At the Oklahoma Aquarium, students get a behind the scenes look at what life in extreme environments might be like.  On their trip to western Oklahoma, the students observe land formations that are comparable to those on Mars.  At the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, students get a chance to visit the lunar and meteorite processing labs and will take a public tour of the JSC. The students will also visit a local industrial partner to see what the space business is like. They will have a planetarium demonstration at the Space Center and an observing night on the observation deck of Kimpel Hall at the U of A where they will peer through a telescope.

The trips are hosted by members of the Space Center faculty.

The students attend weekly seminars covering a variety of topics in space and planetary sciences.  The seminars are given by Space Center faculty, researchers, graduate students, and affiliates.  Students also receive “how-to” seminars on making poster and oral presentations.  The students, their mentors and their home institutions are listed below.

	Saroj Adhikari Dr. Rick Ulrich; Planetary atmospheres, planetary instruments U. of Central Arkansas
	Sky Beard Dr. Julia Kennefick; Asteroid surface processes Purdue University (IN)
	Stacy Bretzius Dr. Derek Sears; Space materials, planetary simulations Univ. of Maryland
	Lauren Foster Dr. Alan Mantooth; Mixed-signal circuit and system designs St. John’s U. (NY)
	Mateo Naranjo Dr. Derek Sears; Space materials, planetary simulations Florida Institute of Technology
	Christine Nicholson Dr. Vincent Chevrier; Water on Mars Univ. of Arkansas - Fayetteville
	Amanda Schilling Dr. Julia Kennefick; Quasar astronomy Univ. of Arkansas - Fayetteville

Spring has been a busy time for center researchers. Several faculty members and students have attended a variety of conferences to present the results of their research.

Larry Roe, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Mechanical Enginnering, and Ahmed El Shafie, a Space Center graduate student, attended the CubeSat Developer’s Workshop at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. The CubeSat Project is an international collaboration of over 40 universities, high schools, and private firms developing picosatellites containing scientific, private, and government payloads.

Tim Kral, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Biological Sciences, and Vincent Chevrier, an Assistant Research Professor at the Space Center attended the Astrobiology Science Conference in Santa Clara, California.  Chevrier presented a poster entitled, “Very low-temperature aqueous fluids on Mars.” Kral had an oral presentation entitled, “Survival of Methanogens Following Dessication at 6 mbar.”

Dr. Kral also attended the American Society for Microbiology annual meeting in Boston where he presented a poster entitled, “Survival of Methanogens Following Desiccation at Mars Surface Pressure for 60 Days.”

Derek Sears, the director of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Chemistry/Biochemistry, recently traveled to a workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called Ground Truth from Mars: Science Payoff from a Sample Return Mission.

Fang-Zhen Teng, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Geosciences, recently gave an invited talk on “high-temperature lithium isotope fraction-ation” in the session of “Recent advances in high precision mass spectrometry (TIMS, MC-ICP-MS, SIMS) and their application in Earth and Planetary Sciences” at the spring American Geophysical Union in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Dr. Teng has also been asked to give a plenary presentation on his research relating to the SF-ICP-MS at the 7th International Sector Field Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry Conference at Rutgers University in September 2008.

Bryson, K., Chevrier, V., Sears, D.W.G., Ulrich, R., Stability of ice on Mars and the water diurnal cycle: Experimental study of the sublimation of ice through a fine-grained basaltic regolith, Icarus (2008), doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2008.02. 011.

Chevrier, V., Ostrowski, D., Sears, D.W.G., Experimental study of the sublimation of ice through an unconsolidated clay layer: Implications for the stability of ice on Mars and the possible diurnal variations in atmospheric water, Icarus (2008), doi:10.1016/j.icarus. 2008.03.009.

Chittenden, J.D., Chevrier, V., Roe, L., Bryson, K., Pilgrim, R., Sears, D.W.G., Experimental study of the effect of wind on the stability of water ice on Mars, Icarus (2008), doi:10.1016/j.icarus. 2008.01.016.

Seigar, M. S., et al. (2008). Discovery of a relationship between spiral arm morphology and supermassive black hole mass in disk galaxies. The Astrophysical Journal, 678: L93-L96.

Teng, F., Dauphas, N., Helz, R., Iron Isotope Fractionation During Magmatic Differentiation in Kilauea Iki Lava Lake, Science, 20 June 2008: 1620-1622.

Space Center graduate students Kathy Gietzen, Dan Ostrowski, Travis Altheide, and Kate Coleman are involved with the University GT Scholars programs this summer teaching both iCAMP and Summer Institute through the department of Pre-College Programs at the University. GT Scholars was developed to acknowledge the best and brightest 6th -12th students in Arkansas and surrounding states with students nominated by local educators for their exceptional academic ability or achievement.

During the first program, the students will be teaching iCAMP, a week-long summer program for rising 7th graders. It offers students a chance to visit eight departments on campus, including the Space Center. The students will have a planetarium demonstration, a tour of the Center, and lectures and activities about the size and scale of the solar system, current NASA science missions, and spacecraft engineering.

Summer Institute is a three-week residential experience for students entering the seventh, eighth, or ninth grade and offers 10 classes including Space Rocks and Exploring Mars. Gietzen and Ostrowski are teaching Space Rocks, and they will be exploring comets, asteroids, and meteors with the students. They will have several guest speakers from the University faculty as well as other graduate students. The students will have a tour of the Center, a planetarium demonstration, and a sample collector design lesson. Altheide and Coleman will be teaching Exploring Mars where they will have the students complete soil sample characterizations similar to those completed by Viking in the 1970’s and those that will be performed by Phoenix that landed on Mars last month. They will also have a planetarium demonstration, a tour of the Space Center, and will design a mission to Mars. Both groups will complete activities to demonstrate how space is studied at the Center.

The Space Center recently concluded an astronomy workshop for teachers on the UArk campus.  The “WebScopes in the Classroom” workshop  was held June 19-21, under the direction of Claud Lacy, a member of the Space Center and a faculty member in the department of Physics.  The topics covered included observational astronomy and robotic learning techniques. This is the third time that the WebScopes in the Classroom workshop has been offered.

Photo caption: WebScopes in the Classroom participant Nina P. Cummings from Cabot High School in Cabot, Arkansas, and facilitator Dr. Claud Lacy

Post Doctoral Associate position
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, CA

This position involves the development of a sensitive broadband seismometer capable of capturing very small seismic signals. Based on an analysis of the fundamental noise limits, we found that it is possible to develop a seismometer with sensitivity at least 100 times higher than the current state of the art. The goal of the project is to reach this fundamental limit.

Asteroids, Comets, Meteors Meeting
July 13-18, 2008
Baltimore, MD

NLSI Lunar Science Conference
July 20-23, 2008
NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA

71st Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society
July 28-August 1, 2008
Matsue, Japan

DPS Meeting
October 10-15, 2008
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY