Speaker Night – Dr JJ Kavelaars University of Victoria

On January 1st, 2019 NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft executed a flawless encounter of the small world now known as Arrokoth.  Our understanding of the nature of the outer solar system and processes of planet formation have been transformed by the very first resolved images of this building block of planets.  The imaging and spectroscopy from Arrokoth have enabled a new understanding of planetesimals and their formation.  I will describe the processes that enable this historic encounter to occur and the science results from the spacecraft imaging.

BIOGRAPHY: Born in London Ontario Canada, Dr JJ Kavelaars is a Principle Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre where he has worked since 2002 and has been the Head of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre since 2019.  Dr. Kavelaars searches the sky for outer solar system objects and has discovered dozens of satellites of the giant planets and over 1000 minor planets in the distant solar system.  He is a co-lead of the Canada-France Ecliptic Plan Survey and the Outer Solar System Origin Survey and co-Investigate on NASA New Horizons Kuiper Extended Mission.  Dr. Kavelaars has served on numerous national and international science committees, organized science conferences and contributed chapters to review books.  He has co-authored over 100 peer reviewed science articles and his research has been cited by his peers over 4000 times.