Linda Morabito
| Linda Morabito | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 21, 1953 Vancouver, Canada |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | University of Southern California |
| Known for | Discovering volcanism on Io |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | http://www.lindamorabito.com |
Linda A. Morabito (born November 21, 1953), also known as Linda Kelly, Linda Hyder, and Linda Morabito-Meyer, is the astronomer who made the discovery of volcanic activity on Io, a moon of Jupiter, on March 9, 1979, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At the time of her discovery, she was serving as Cognizant Engineer over the Optical Navigation Image Processing System (ONIPS) on the Voyager deep space mission Navigation Team. While performing image processing analysis of a Voyager 1 picture taken for spacecraft navigation, she detected a 270 kilometres (170 mi) tall cloud off the limb of Io. The cloud was of volcanic origin. This was the first time in history that active volcanism was detected outside Earth. Her discovery is considered by some planetary scientists as the largest discovery of the planetary exploration program that has come out of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Morabito is currently an associate professor of astronomy at Victor Valley College. Linda Morabito Meyer is also the author of a memoir, Parallel Universes, a Memoir from the Edges of Space and Time.
Born in Vancouver, Canada, she immigrated with her family to the United States in 1961. As a child, she believed that she had always known she would be an astronomer and benefited greatly from an accelerated program of learning in the Pasadena, CA Unified School District, skipping an entire year of elementary school because of her demonstrated knowledge. By her 9th year of school, she wrote a paper for school entitled "My Job in the World Astronomer".
Linda Morabito married Major David Meyer (U.S. Air Force, Retired), an Associate Professor of Astronomy, in 2008. She has one son, Ryan Hyder, a musician, Two Step-Son's, Jason and Brett Hyder and three grandchildren Robert Wooten, Nathan Hyder and J.D. Hyder.
Linda Morabito graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in astronomy in 1974 and did graduate work in computer science at USC. Before receiving her astronomy degree, she joined Jet Propulsion Laboratory for temporary summer employment, and accepted a position after receiving her degree in the Outer Planet Satellite Ephemeris Development Group at Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a senior engineer (1974–1981). In March 1979, she discovered the anomalous "crescent" off the limb of Jupiter’s moon Io in a picture of Io taken by Voyager 1 for navigation, after the Voyager 1 close encounter with Jupiter. She proposed a series of hypotheses and conducted investigations to prove or disprove them, to identify the "crescent". Morabito was able to deduce that the observation was a plume erupting from the surface of Io, and volcanic in origin. Her discovery was announced to the world on March 12, 1979.
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