Blogging from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Emily Rice, a research scientist in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics, is working with a collaborator to model the atmospheres of low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and giant gas planets, including descriptions of their chemistry and clouds. A major new exhibition about the future of space exploration opens at the Museum this fall.

For this trip, I made an unfamiliar journey to a familiar destination: Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. I have visited Lowell almost 10 times in the past seven years, but until this trip I was traveling to Flagstaff from Los Angeles, where I was studying astronomy at University of California, Los Angeles. For this, my first trip to Lowell since becoming a research scientist at the Museum, I spent 14 hours taking three flights from bustling New York City to tranquil Flagstaff.

Last month, Museum Curator George E. Harlow wrote for The New York Times’ “Scientist at Work” blog while unearthing clues from past geologic traffic accidents — remnants of tectonic plate collisions, including jade — during field work in Guatemala funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation award through the American Museum of Natural History.