Dr. Jeff Morgenthaler

Dr. Jeff Morgenthaler likes to think of himself as an experimental physicist whose laboratory opens to the sky. His current laboratory is the PSI Observatory, also known as the Io Input/Output observatory (IoIO). IoIO images neutral sodium (the Jovian sodium nebula) and ionized sulfur (the Io plasma torus) around Jupiter in order to answer understand how Jupiter's magnetosphere responds to variations in the amount of material supplied by its volcanic moon Io. IoIO has fortuitously provided insights into the geologic processes that produce that material, as discussed in seen leaving Io's atmosphere. IoIO also records images of Mercury's sodium tail and bright comets and studies transiting extrasolar planets, searching for orbital decay.