Date: Sunday 22 May 2016, at 4pm
Venue: MTG, Tennyson Street, Napier
Admission: Free to members; $5 for non-members

A presentation by Dr Michele Bannister
(Postdoctoral fellow at Victoria University, British Columbia, Canada)

The images returning from the New Horizons spacecraft following its flyby of Pluto show a remarkable world: mountains soaring higher than the Southern Alps, smooth plains bubbling like a slow-boiling pot, glaciers of nitrogen ice, dark ancient terrain. Not to be outdone, its big moon Charon is rifted by chasms and canyons. What was predicted? What did we discover? Many new puzzles await. Come find out!

Dr Michele Bannister is an expert in searching for icy worlds in the outer Solar System and works on the Outer Solar System Origins Survey trying to understand the formation and evolution of the Solar System.  Originally from Taranaki, Michele undertook her PhD searching for bright icy worlds in the southern sky at Mt Stromlo and currently lives in Canada.

Michele is in Napier to take part in the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ’s annual conference on May 21-22, and this meeting is jointly held with RASNZ and the Hawke’s Bay Astronomical Society