An Evening with the Stars: Cache Valley's Role in Space

Friday, February 8, at 7:00 p.m. in the Logan Tabernacle and it is free of charge.

The next event in the Logan Tabernacle Concert and Lecture Series is one back by popular demand. An Evening with the Stars: Cache Valley’s Role in Space tells the history of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, USU’s involvement, and will show on the Tabernacle’s large screen many of the stunning images captured by the WISE instrument. 

The presenter is JOHN ELLWELL, the program manager for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, built by USU’s Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL). The WISE telescope was created by SDL for NASA to survey the whole sky. Launched into orbit in December 2009, WISE scanned the entire sky in infrared wavelengths, taking millions of spectacular images, and discovered distant galaxies, comets and brown dwarf stars, and thousands of previously unknown asteroids.

Mr. Elwell holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering, and has spent the last 25 years working on space instrumentation. He has been involved in a variety of NASA and military programs, ranging from upper atmospheric research looking at aurora, to monitoring global earth systems with the NASA Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, and most recently managing the WISE program for mapping the entire universe in infrared light.

After spending his childhood taking apart old radios and TVs, Elwell entered college only to be disappointed to find that vacuum tubes were no longer part of the curriculum. In his spare time, he still enjoys working on vacuum-tube radios, a hobby that both his wife and dog consider harmless.

Anyone who enjoys looking at the night sky will be delighted with this presentation.   The presentation, first given a year ago, is one of the most talked events in recent Tabernacle series history and the Series committee unanimously voted to bring it back this year.

The Logan Tabernacle Concert and Lecture Series is associated with Cache Community Connections and appreciates the support of the Cache County RAPZ tax.