inflated a big black fabric tent in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Wednesday and stood outside it inviting passers-by: “Come on in and watch the show 鈥� we’re talking about astrobiology.”

Barnes, a 91探花 research assistant professor of astronomy, was showing off the department’s to colleagues at , the national conference on astrobiology, . The conference is happening all week at the Hyatt, and dozens of 91探花faculty and students are involved.

The tent is about 10 feet tall and 20 feet across and stays upright with the help of a high-powered fan. Its graphics come via Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope. 91探花astronomy faculty and students to conduct outreach about astronomy to area schools, and have been educating (and entertaining) thousands of students about the cosmos since.

But recently, Barnes and graduate students have been using the Mobile Planetarium to tell K-12 students about astrobiology. It’s a hit with middle school students especially, he said.

“They get excited about it. It鈥檚 a very visceral experience, very immersive, and there’s often a lot of screaming as they move through the universe,” Barnes said, smiling. “You can see they’re engaged.”

Astrobiology graduate students were conducting the shows inside the tent on Wednesday, starting a new presentation every so often as people filed by and stepped 鈥� climbed, really 鈥� through a fabric doorway into the dark interior.

There mid-Wednesday, astronomy doctoral students David Graham, then , gave engaging, illustrated lectures to visitors huddled in the darkness inside. Aided by graphics displayed in color against the rounded tent ceiling, they in turn took their audience from scenes of “extremophile” creatures living on Earth out through the solar system and into deep space 鈥� so far out, whole galaxies appear as mere dots.

Garcia talked of the “big questions” astrobiologists want to answer, leading with the most basic: “Are we alone in the universe?”

He added: “Personally I think this also tells me that life is precious. Even if planets are common we haven’t seen life on them yet, so the life on our own planet is really precious as well.

“So, it’s not just a scientific pursuit 鈥� astrobiology 鈥� but it’s also, how do we relate to our environment? And I think it’s really beautiful in that way.”

Barnes does assessments before and after his school visits and said they show the students enjoy the presentation, even if a little part of that might be just being away from class.

“But it’s all just about getting them to remember this experience. They remember they had a good experience 鈥� that’s still a win.”

He said one thing he definitely sees is that “people from all over, whatever their background, they do ‘get’ this 鈥� they go, ‘Whoa, there’s no life out there that we know, but that’s interesting and maybe I can think about this.’

“And the best, of course, is every time you go you get two or three kids who say, ‘This is really cool 鈥� maybe I want to study planets.'”

Barnes also reported on the 91探花Mobile Planetarium to the conference in a separate session Thursday. He hopes to keep it going and is looking for further funding for the project.

Soon he was back out front, looking for the next audience.

“We’re talking astrobiology. Want to come in and see the show?”

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For more information, contact Barnes at rkb9@uw.edu.

is the study of life in the universe and of the terrestrial environments and planetary and stellar processes that support it. To study astrobiology is to ask questions that cut across multiple disciplines and could take lifetimes to answer. The field gathers expertise from a host of other disciplines including biology, chemistry, geology, oceanography, atmospheric and Earth science, aeronautical engineering and of course astronomy itself.

These questions also include: What can Earth鈥檚 own species, and its chemical past, tell us about how to spot life elsewhere? How did the first cells arise? Can we map the surfaces of exoplanets? How can we motivate students to be curious about space?

Every two years, researchers gather from around the world to share and discuss their latest findings in a weeklong conference. Called for short, this year鈥檚 conference will be held June 24-28 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bellevue. It鈥檚 the biggest meeting of astrobiologists in the world and dozens of 91探花 researchers will attend and participate.

Public attitudes have warmed greatly toward astrobiology in the 21^st century, prompted by exoplanet discoveries and exploration of other worlds in the solar system. Study of extraterrestrial life remains a hopeful science wryly aware that, as an old joke goes, it has yet to prove that its very subject matter exists.

The 91探花founded its own program in 1999, involving roughly 30 faculty and about as many students a year. “The program is a leader in both training the next generation of astrobiologists and in fundamental astrobiology research,” said , 91探花professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the UW-based , which explores computer models of planetary environments and will be the subject of a .

“The Astrobiology Science Conference is the biggest meeting of astrobiologists in the world, and this year, members of the 91探花Astrobiology Program are playing a major role in conference organization, as well as presenting our research at the meeting,” said Meadows, who chaired the science committee for AcSciCon2019.

Here are several 91探花presentations and papers scheduled for the weeklong conference. Though the lead presenter is listed here only, most projects involve the work of several colleagues.

• A study of water vapor and ice particles emitting from the plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, leading to a better understanding of the moon’s subsurface ocean. With Earth and space sciences doctoral student and colleagues. ()
• An examination of whether the coming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect atmospheres for all worlds in the intriguing, seven-planet system TRAPPIST-1, and finding that clouds and water vapor in the planets’ atmospheres might make such study more challenging. With astronomy and astrobiology doctoral student and colleagues. ()
• Description of a new open-source computer software package called VPLanet that simulates a wide range of planetary systems across billions of years, simulating atmospheres, orbits and stellar phenomena that can affect a planet’s ability to sustain liquid water on its surface, which is key to life. With Rory Barnes and colleagues. ()
• An exploration of how viruses and hosts co-evolved, enabling microbial life in extremely cold brines. With oceanography professor ().
• Modeling Earth’s atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago and the effect of iron-rich micrometeorites that rained down, melted and interacted with the surrounding gases, leading to a better understanding of carbon dioxide levels at that time. With Earth and space sciences graduate student and colleagues. ()
• A presentation on the 91探花Astronomy Department’s successful outreach to students through its that visits K-12 schools, enabling them to create shows of their own. With astronomy research assistant professor and several colleagues. and .)
• An exploration of how to determine if oxygen detected on an exoplanet is really produced by life, using high-resolution planetary spectra from ground-based telescopes. With , an astronomy doctoral student, and colleagues. ()
• A discussion of how studying a giant Pacific Octopus might help us learn more about different forms of cognition and better know and understand life beyond Earth 鈥� if we ever find it. With , a doctoral student in psychology. ()
• A study of microbial life in extremely cold brines within unfrozen subsurface areas of permafrost, and their possible relevance to similar environments on Mars or icy moons in the solar system. With , a doctoral student in biological oceanography, and colleagues. (.)

Many other 91探花faculty members will participate, either with reports on their own research or in support of colleagues or graduate students. These include ESS professors , , , , , astronomy professors , and , among others.

Astrobiologists such as Sullivan point out that the field鈥檚 focus and scientific benefit is about more than simply hunting for life, though that is the key motivator.

“It鈥檚 about thinking about life in a cosmic context. And about the origin and evolution of life,” Sullivan said.

“Even if you only care about Earth life, astrobiology is a viable 鈥� fundamental, I would say 鈥� interdisciplinary science that thrives independently of the existence of extraterrestrial life.鈥�

Planets and moons loomed over the high school students’ heads in the darkness: Mars rust-orange, Neptune an eerie blue, massive Jupiter with its pastel swirls and Saturn its icy rings.

The young researchers used to travel the solar system virtually, swooping from planet to planet, past moons and through the asteroid belt. Checking notes by flashlight, they told what they had learned of these worlds 鈥� the thin atmosphere of Mars, Jupiter’s 400-year-old storm, the possible seas of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan, and more.

Astronomer Carl Sagan might have called this “a starship of the imagination.” But really, it was a sort of inflated tent, 10 feet high and 20 across, in the choir room of Bellevue’s Sammamish High School, on an evening in late October.

It was just another gig for the 91探花 Astronomy Department’s .

The traveling planetarium is an igloo-like fabric dome made by that stays upright with the help of a high-powered fan. The dome is big enough, if only just, to hold a classroom of students. Operators use a convex mirror, reflecting images from the online telescope program onto the dome to approximate the boundlessness of space.

The planetarium was created in 2012 as part of the ‘s outreach efforts that also include student visits to the and public star-viewing at the .

Those campus attractions draw about 1,000 students a year, but oddly, not many from the Seattle area. The mobile planetarium was designed to turn that around and take astronomy to the schools.

Another turnaround is also key to the traveling dome: It uses the online telescope program to “flip” the traditional planetarium experience, enabling students to create their own shows 鈥� as they did this evening at Sammamish High.

91探花undergraduate student talents were heavily involved with the planetarium’s design and construction 鈥� notably Justin Gaily, who has since graduated, who helped develop the dome’s mirror-based optics and wrote curriculum for the planetarium’s use in schools like Sammamish. In fact, Gaily’s design has been duplicated by folks creating similar planetariums in Poland, Australia and England.

“You essentially make little stops,” Gaily said in 2012. “You can say, I want to look at this planet and you can pause the tour and talk about it, then move on and it will pan to the next subject.”

Phil Rosenfield, then a doctoral student, headed the design team that also included John Wisniewski, a post-doctoral researcher who has since taken a faculty position at the University of Oklahoma. Now, , a lecturer in astronomy, takes the planetarium on the road to its school visits 鈥� with the help of volunteers and sometimes almost singlehandedly.

Fraser said last school year, 1,700 people saw presentations inside the traveling dome, “thanks in part to some very busy science fairs,” and of those, about 100 were elementary and middle-school students giving the planetarium presentations they had created themselves.

More than just intergalactic show-and-tell, the dome is a teaching tool.

“Students are often impressed with the scale of the visuals once they are immersed in the worlds of the solar system, but to get to that point they have had to learn how to work something entirely new, and have prepared to give a presentation to their peers,” Fraser said. “I think these experiences help prepare people for learning and using whatever technology will be common in their adult lives.”

Fraser hopes use of the mobile astronomy unit will continue to increase with time and growing public awareness.

“I’ve told my volunteers to think of how and where they would like to use the mobile planetarium,” he said.

“I’d love for the people who have presented so much to others to bring the dome to their own communities. I’m also hoping to partner with community centers in Seattle that often look for programming 鈥� working with them is a great way to reach students whose schools find it harder to make space and time for the mobile planetarium.”

The traveling planetarium will get some additional exposure when the American Astronomical Association hosts its annual meeting in Seattle in January 2015. Fraser will join representatives of Microsoft as they present information on the use of the Worldwide Telescope in that international conference,

Back inside the dome at Sammamish High, students and their teacher, Lisa Neshyba, both overcame nerves as presentations continued and planets loomed and soared massively overhead.

Student Georgia Phillips concluded a presentation on Saturn and its moons with a dome-filling image of the ringed planet as seen from its most planetlike moon, Titan.

“It’s a lot like Earth in the amount of liquid on it,” Georgia said as Neshyba, Fraser and her fellow students listened in the reflected glow. “And what’s interesting is that there could possibly be life there 鈥� we just don’t know.”

After a well-deserved round of applause that reverberated flatly inside the crowded mobile planetarium, Neshyba added her own comment to the students: “I am so proud of you right now,” she said.

• Watch the 91探花Mobile Planetarium get set up, used and taken down all in a minute. All photos were taken by Mary Levin of 91探花Photography.