Abstract: We are studying the surfaces of other planets at increasingly high resolution, effectively placing ourselves there as researchers. This necessitates a good understanding of processes and landforms we might see, studies of which are often much easier to perform on Earth, where we can walk around on the landforms and take samples. We have done studies of lava lakes in Vanuatu and Ethiopia to better understand lakes of lava on Jupiter’s moon Io, including their behavior over time and their temperatures. We are studying large megadunes of the deserts of Egypt, Namibia, the United Arab Emirates and the Western Outback of Australia to better understand the linear dunes covering almost 1/4 of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. Such analogue studies are not only providing new insights into our studies of other planets, but our planetary studies are feeding back on our understanding of landforms here on Earth.

Bio: Jani Radebaugh is a planetary scientist who specializes in the shapes and origins of landscapes in the solar system. She studies features on Earth’s surface, where it is possible to walk around on them and obtain samples, to gain insight into similar landforms and processes on other planets. Her current investigations include giant sand dunes, mountains, volcanoes, rivers and lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft and actively erupting volcanoes and mountains on Jupiter’s moon Io from Galileo, Cassini, and Voyager spacecraft. She has done field work in the Egyptian Sahara, the Arabian peninsula, the Ethiopian Afar Rift Valley, Hawaii, the desert southwestern US, and Antarctica. Some of her field studies have been captured on film, including in the internationally syndicated How the Universe Works 3 series from Pioneer Productions in the UK. She obtained her PhD in planetary science from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and she is now an associate professor of geological sciences at Brigham Young University. She seeks to understand how field studies on Earth, including work on big desert dunes and remote volcanoes, as well as meteorite searching in Antarctica, have helped us better understand processes in the outer solar system revealed by the myriad spacecraft orbiting, flying by, or landed on other planetary bodies.