PEEC News:

Saturday, April 20, at the PEEC Earth Day festival, Dr. Chick Keller will share stories of eclipse missions in the 1970s.

Dr. Keller will share insights about the 1970s airborne studies of the sun’s corona during total solar eclipses – conducted at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

By taking the eclipse observations airborne, lab scientists, including Keller and Art Cox, were able to extend their study of totality, as well as reduce interference from the atmosphere.

Dr. Keller will talk about the successes and failures of some of these missions, sharing fantastic photographs of the corona. This is an encore presentation of Dr. Keller’s talk from March. It will start at 11:30 a.m. in the Los Alamos Nature Center planetarium and admission is free. 

Dr. Chick Keller

Dr. Keller has been a fixture in Los Alamos since 1967 when he first came as a LASL student, and then as an employee from 1969 to 2001. For the last 13 years of his tenure, he was the Director of the University of California’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics-LANL branch.

Dr. Keller is one of the founders of PEEC, having done everything from building shelves at the old PEEC, serving as PEEC Board President, to establishing the Jemez Mountain Herbarium.

For more information about this PEEC astronomy program and Earth Day, visit the following link, Earth Day Activities.

For information about other PEEC programs, visit peecnature.org/events, email kristen@peecnature.org, or call 505.662.0460.

About PEEC:

PEEC was founded in 2000 to serve the community of Los Alamos. It offers people of all ages a way to enrich their lives by strengthening their connections to our canyons, mesas, mountains, and skies. PEEC operates the Los Alamos Nature Center at 2600 Canyon Road, holds regular programs and events, and hosts several interest groups, from birding to hiking to butterfly-watching.