Morrill Hall to host Asteroid Day

The University of Nebraska College of Law’s Frans von der Dunk and Elsbeth Magilton will be featured presenters at this year’s Asteroid Day at 6:30 p.m. June 30 at Mueller Planetarium in Morrill Hall, south of 14th and Vine streets.

Asteroid Day is a global movement to increase public awareness of potential asteroid collisions and how to protect Earth. It was cofounded in 2015 by Brian May, astrophysicist and lead guitarist for the rock band Queen; Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and German filmmaker Grig Richters. Asteroid Day is on June 30 to mark Earth’s largest asteroid impact in recorded history, the Siberia Tunguska event in 1908, which devastated more than 1,200 square miles, the size of a major metropolitan city.

The event in Mueller Planetarium will feature a video stream of professor von der Dunk’s discussion of the 100X Declaration, which calls for the deployment of available technology to detect and track Near-Earth Asteroids, an acceleration of the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids and the global adoption of Asteroid Day.

Magilton, executive director of the College of Law’s Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law program, will discuss the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission, designed, built and managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA.

After the presentations, Mueller Planetarium will present the fulldome shows “Firefall” and “B612 Sentinel Program.”

Guests attending the Asteroid Day event will receive free admission to Morrill Hall and the fulldome shows. Light snacks and non-alcoholic beverages are included.

The event is targeted at adults and teens, although children 8 and older might find it enjoyable. Children 3 and under are not permitted in the planetarium.

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