Introducing Cesare Grava

I am a Research Scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. I got both my master’s degree and my PhD in Astronomy at the University of Padua, Italy, where Galileo discovered the Jovian moons and ushered the modern era of astronomy, with a thesis on (among other objects)… Io, one of the Galilean moons. I study the exospheres of airless bodies in the Solar System: the Moon, Io, Mercury… you name it. I combine Monte Carlo modeling with data analysis (spectroscopy), with data taken both from the ground and from space. I am deputy project scientist of LAMP, UV spectrograph on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and I am on the team of Strofio, a mass spectrometer that is currently en route to Mercury on BepiColombo. You can find me on twitter at @cesaregrava

Besides astronomy (especially planetary science), my passions are (in no particular order): movies (including some blockbusters), geography, traveling, hiking, Queen, and photography.

 

Introducing Paul Byrne

Paul Byrne (@ThePlanetaryGuy) is Assistant Professor of Planetary Science at North Carolina State University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in planetary geology from Trinity College Dublin in 2010 and participated in the MESSENGER mission as a postdoctoral fellow from 2011 to 2015 at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Through a combination of remotely sensed data, physical and numerical modeling, and fieldwork at analog sites, his research focuses on the links between surface and interior processes on rocky and icy bodies in this solar System and beyond.