NAI
2005 Annual Science Report
University of California, Los Angeles
Reporting | JUL 2004 – JUN 2005
Extrasolar Planetary Systems and the Potential for Terrestrial Planets
Project Progress
Dr. Becklin worked with Alycia Weinberger and Ben Zuckerman to detect organic material in a nearby debris disk and worked with Inseok Song, Alycia Weinberger, and Ben Zuckerman and discovered a debris disk around a solar like star with processed crystal silicates in the Earth region.
Dr. Becklin is also the Chief Scientist and Director Designate of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA has the potential to be one of NASA’s primary astronomical platforms to study organic material in space. Dr. Becklin has worked with the various NAI members and the SOFIA team to make this happen. This year’s accomplishments include: 1) assured that UCLA’s SOFIA instrument FLITECAM has spectrometer to observe the 3.3 micron C-H stretch band 2) worked with NASA NAI and SOFIA team to have spectroscopic capability in 5-30µm region including 6µm C-C feature.
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PROJECT INVESTIGATORS:
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RELATED OBJECTIVES:
Objective 1.1
Models of formation and evolution of habitable planets
Objective 1.2
Indirect and direct astronomical observations of extrasolar habitable planets
Objective 3.1
Sources of prebiotic materials and catalysts
