November 2011

College of Charleston Offers Exhibition Focused on the Moon

The College of Charleston will present the exhibit, From the Moon: Mapping & Exploration, on view at the new Sciences and Mathematics Building, 2nd floor, in Charleston, SC, on view from Nov. 14 through Mar. 3, 2012. A reception will be held on Nov. 12, from 7-9pm. The College will also present Moon Fest on Saturday, Nov. 12, from 11am – 2pm. A lecture will be given by Dr. Carle Pieters, on Saturday, Nov. 12, at 4pm.

From the Moon: Mapping & Exploration addresses our visual perceptions of the Moon, from Earth and from space, and demonstrates how advances in optical technologies have increased our understanding over time. This is an exhibition exploring our relationship to the Moon through the lens of the sciences. From Galileo’s first observations to today’s powerful telescopes, this exhibition will include a broad range of man’s attempts at mapping and understanding lunar history. A key component will be NASA’s documentation of the Apollo lunar landings as well as current research and missions. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be a Moon rock collected during the Apollo 15 mission from June to August 1971.

Co-curators Roger Manley and Mark Sloan have traveled throughout North America and Europe gathering materials for the exhibition from some of the world’s oldest and most prestigious observatories. Some of these objects, maps and images have never before been exhibited. The exhibition’s Lunar Science Consultant is Dr. Cassandra Runyon, Professor of Planetary Geology at the College of Charleston. The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in partnership with the College of Charleston School of Sciences and Mathematics and the Special Collections Department of the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library will present this exhibition with funding from NASA and the National Lunar Science Institute.

Moon Fest activities will be led by Dr. Cassandra Runyon; Cyndi Hall, Program Director for the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium; and Elizabeth Joyner, Site Director for the South Carolina Maritime Foundation and Sanders Clyde Elementary/Middle School. Tours of the exhibition will be available. The exhibition will be housed at the College of Charleston’s New Science Center Building and at the Special Collections Department of the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library, 3rd Floor, 205 Calhoun Street.

Professor Carle Pieters has been a faculty member at Brown University since 1980, after having worked several years at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sarawak. Her general research efforts include planetary exploration and evolution of planetary surfaces with an emphasis on remote compositional analyses. Dr. Pieters is the Science Manager of the NASA/Keck Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB), a NASA-supported spectroscopy facility at Brown that operates from 0.3 to 25 mm. She is Principal Investigator for NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) experiment that was launched to the Moon in early 2008 and is Co-Investigator on Dawn, a mission to explore the asteroids Vesta and Ceres.

For further information visit (moon.cofc.edu).

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