Flying at 45,000 Feet: Adventures in the Stratosphere with Jean Creighton
Fee: Free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden.
Registration: Pre-registration is required, please email us at info@lyndensculpturegarden.org.
Jean Creighton, director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at UWM, was selected by NASA to be an Airborne Astronomy Ambassador on the largest moving astronomical observatory in the world, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). She will talk about her adventures in the stratosphere and about the joys working for NASA. If it's clear, we will finish up by going out on the grounds to look for stars and constellations. Please dress appropriately.
About Jean Creighton
Jean Creighton is the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has always lived in big cities where the city lights tend to obscure the stars of the night. This may be why she appreciates a planetarium theater. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Creighton grew up in Athens, Greece where her mother claims she showed a great interest in how stars form from the age of five. For Creighton, physics was the gateway to astronomy, so she studied (in the Physics Department) at the University of Athens, graduating in 1991. While writing her honors thesis was on the planet Neptune, she discovered that she wanted more astronomy in her life; she went on to get a master's degree from Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Waterloo. After that, she was fortunate enough to be involved in an infrared satellite called WIRE as a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Since September 1999, she has been teaching astronomy at various levels at UWM, becoming director of the planetarium in 2007. "It's great fun to share my excitement with my audience as well as with my own two boys," says Creighton.
