Professor Edward Rhodes, Jr., a Phd astrophysicist from the University of Southern California, will give a lecture about an exciting lunar surface based "suitcase" solar telescope that he is proposing for the next series of manned missions to the moon. He is the Professor of Astronomy at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California. He is also a Research Scientist at the Astrophysics and Space Sciences Section of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Dr. Rhodes is a NASA-selected Co-Investigator on the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager Experiment now under development for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, which will be launched in February of 2009. Previously he served as both a Co-Investigator and later as a Guest Investigator on the Solar Oscillation Investigation-Michelson Doppler Imager Experiment (SOI-MDI) which has been operating onboard the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft since April of 1996.

Since 1984, Dr. Rhodes has also served as the Principal Investigator of the 60-Foot Solar Tower of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, a long term obervation project in helioseismology.