LANDSAT satellite image of New Mexico with green colors indicating vegetation. Blue patch at bottom center is White Sands National Monument.

How's the Weather?

The weather here in the Albuquerque area is typical of the high desert, with warm summers and crisp winters. Rainfall averages around 10 inches (25 cm) per year, concentrated largely during the "monsoon" season from early July to late August or early September, when the humidity rises and late-afternoon thunderstorms become a fixture. Good descriptions of how the North American monsoon systems work can be found at The Weather Almanac and at the Tuscson office of The National Weather Service. You can have a look at virtually up-to-the-minute weather conditions and forecasts, plus satellite images, Doppler radar images, and more courtesy of the good folks at The Weather Underground (whose weather-gadget appears above, and which you can click for an instant snapshot of current conditions). This is my favorite source of weather info on the net.

Welcome

Hi there, glad you could make it. In these pages, you can get a look at some of the things that I find interesting, enjoyable, necessary, or some combinations of these. Follow the links on the menu bar at the top of these pages to get to those areas you'd like to check out; descriptions of each section appear below. These pages will look best if you "maximize" your browser.

General Information

I'm a Research Scientist in Geology, specifically Igneous Petrology. (For you non-geologists, petrology is the part of geology concerned with just how particular rocks are formed.) In July 2002, I took up a position here in the Institute of Meteoritics, which is part of the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I manage the IOM's High Pressure Laboratory, where we do experimental petrologic studies of planetary materials. I came here after three years as part of the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Sciences (ARES) program office, formerly the Earth Science and Solar System Exploration Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center, located in the Clear Lake area, about 20 miles south of Houston, Texas. That was where I first branched into planetary science in addition to my other geological interests. My home residence is in the northeast section of Albuquerque, not far from the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. The job market for petrologists in the States has been slim ever since I got my degree in 1991, and I lived overseas, in England and Australia, for over five years before returning to the US in 1996. I've been playing guitar since I was eleven or twelve years old, and had aspired to play for a living until getting bitten by the geology bug in Junior College; so music means a lot to me. I am also an enthusiastic baseball fan and home beer brewer.

Being an Earth and Planetary Scientist, I am keenly interested in things about our planet besides geology, like storms and weather patterns, and about our planet's place in the solar system and in the universe. I have always been fascinated by anything to do with outer space in general, and the (manned and unmanned) exploration of space in particular. So being at NASA was very exciting for me; continuing my involvement in solar system exploration and planetary science living in a fabulous place like Albuquerque and in a distinguished organization like the IOM allows me to continue doing cool stuff without the sometimes crushing level of bureaucracy typical of a federal center. Given this, you will probably not be surprised to learn that I am a big science fiction fan.

And now for the rest of the story

Other sections to these pages can be accessed by using the links below, and the menu bar at the top provides a quick way to jump from one page to another.

Personal Information

Here's some more detailed information about yours truly, including personal history, curriculum vitae, etc.

Geology and Research

Go this way to learn more about my interests and research in Geology and Planetary Science. You'll be able to inspect the abstracts to my journal papers (and request reprints if you want), complete AGU and LPSC abstracts, and descriptions of work in progress. Also, you'll find some links to other institutions where Petrology and its related arts are practiced, as well as to some Web locations that have a petrological flavor of some kind.

Space

Blast off to a collection of cool and informative sites dealing with Space. Links to spaceflight and launch information, space science news, and various mission planning sites, plus to some good image libraries.

Music

You might want to take note of my Music page, where you'll find links to home pages devoted to some of my favorite musical artists. Plus, you can download mp3 files of the recordings made by my brother-in-law Smokin' Bob DiChiro of he and I playing our guitars. Also, there are pictures of my own instruments, made by Pimentel and Sons here in Albuquerque.

Beer

Belly up in this direction to visit the Beer page. You'll find some useful documents on techniques and procedures, the major brewing FAQ files, links to some of the best brewing Web pages around, descriptions and photos of my brewing setup, and more.