Our guest will be Dr. Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist and physicist, the Chief Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech. He’s a co-founder of the Society of Catholic Scientists, and he was an instructor for the 2005 Vatican Observatory Summer School on Astrobiology!
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Our tradition of hosting online meetups with our Sacred Space Astronomy members and the Vatican Observatory staff, scholars and friends during the Full Moon in Tucson (or thereabout) continues on Saturday April 12, 2025 at 12:00 Noon ET (9:00 AM Tucson time – with daylight savings time).
This meetup is a perk for our Sacred Space Astronomy subscribers- you get to chat with each other, and astronomers and scientists from the Vatican Observatory!
We’ll also have the latest astronomy news and an update about the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope1.
Dr. Lunine received a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester in 1980 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1985. He joined JPL in August 2024 as Chief Scientist.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has chaired or co-chaired numerous advisory and strategic planning committees for the Academy and for NASA, including the Giant Planet Systems panel for the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023, and “Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration,” which he co-chaired in 2014 with Mitch Daniels, then President of Purdue University.
Dr. Lunine comes to JPL after 13 years as the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and 5 years as chair of the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. A Caltech alumnus, he has performed pioneering research on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, the nature of planetary interiors and atmospheres, and where environments suited for life might exist in the solar system and beyond. He pursues this research through theoretical modeling and participation in spacecraft missions.
He was an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and is co-investigator on the Juno mission at Jupiter. On the Europa Clipper mission, he is co-investigator for the Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) and a member of the gravity science team. He is also on the 3GM gravity experiment on ESA’s JUICE mission to Ganymede. He served on the Science Working Group of the James Webb Space Telescope as an Interdisciplinary Scientist, which he is currently using for characterization of extrasolar planets and Kuiper Belt objects. Lunine has contributed to many concept studies for solar system and exoplanet characterization missions.
Video: Faith and Science – Dr Jonathan Lunine, Shinzen Young, & Chelsey Fasano
When? Saturday, April 12, 2025: Rain or shine
What time? These meetups will happen around lunch time in North America: in particular, 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, which is 9:00 AM Tucson time.
How do you access the Zoom link? Join Sacred Space Astronomy and you’ll get an email with the full link! If you are already a member, log in to the Vatican Observatory site, and you will see the Zoom info at the bottom of this post.
1The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope consists of the Alice P. Lennon Telescope, and the Thomas J. Bannan Astrophysics Facility.
Cover image photo from: Dominican House of Studies
Cover image Exoplanet graphic from SpaceEngine
