President, Hawaiian Astronomical Society
Former Manager, NASA’s Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center (PRPDC)
Education: M.S. in Geography, University of Hawaii at Manoa, B.S. in Psychology, University of Michigan, USA
Chris Peterson is a lunar scientist at the University of Hawaii. His Ph.D. dissertation utilized remote sensing spectroscopy to analyze mineralogy on the Moon. He worked on determining the extent to which the original crust of the Moon still exists at the surface or buried by ejecta from more recent craters.
After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Korea for 2 ½ years as an English teacher. He later moved to Hawaii where he earned a Master’s degree from the University of Hawaii in Geography, specializing in cartography and remote sensing.
He later returned to UH and earned his Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics, specializing in lunar geology. Since 1999 he has served as the Data Manager at NASA’s Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii. He is also President of the Hawaiian Astronomical Society (HAS), the largest amateur astronomy club on the island of Oahu.