First SPHEREx Outreach Event

The SPHEREx team hosted its first-ever outreach event for friends, family members, and area students at the Keck Institute for Space Studies in the center of the Caltech campus. Here are some snapshots from what turned out to be a fun party. You can see people exploring prototypes of SPHEREx hardware, including the primary mirror and the photon shield. There were also some 3-D printed scale models of the spacecraft and telescope out for inspection, and whiteboard art showcasing SPHEREx science (see below for more about that). Those goggles people are wearing, by the way, allow them to take a virtual-reality tour inside SPHEREx:

As hinted at above, the outreach event featured spectacular whiteboard art by JPL artist Katherine (Kat) Park of The Studio at JPL. It is hard to do it justice with photos sized to fit on a browser screen, but the video below shows how Ms. Park bring the compositions together.