On the first Friday of every month, Boise State’s Brian Jackson works late. Jackson, a professor in the Department of Physics, spearheads the donor-supported First Friday Astronomy program, a series of lectures from space scientists, journalists and policy experts.
After each talk, Jackson invites guests out onto Boise State’s Quad for some guided stargazing well past standard business hours on campus. His students set up telescopes, finding objects in the night sky for the eager public. Distant planets and nebulae appear in the viewfinders, wowing attendees, who get to see the world through an astronomer’s eyes.
First Friday Astronomy is just one small facet of Jackson’s work at Boise State. He is a world-class researcher, an approachable science communicator and an astronomy superstar who has brought more than $3.79 million in grant funding to Idaho.
First-generation scientist
“I’ve always been interested in astronomy since I was a little kid,” Jackson said, recalling his childhood in Lilburn, Georgia. “I really liked watching science documentaries and reading sci-fi and those kinds of things.”
The curiosity was there from the beginning, but it wasn’t until much later that Jackson really considered a career in science. “I was the first person in my family to get a college degree,” he said. “So the prospect of being an astronomer — being a professional scientist — wasn’t necessarily something I thought about until most of the way through my bachelor’s degree.”
A summer internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory changed everything. Jackson worked with NASA scientists preparing for the Cassini mission, a NASA flagship mission traveling to Saturn. The experience opened his eyes to the possibility of planetary research as a career and led to his decision to pursue a Ph.D. in planetary sciences.
In 2014, Jackson joined the physics faculty at Boise State. In that role, he has pioneered new planetary research and brought findings from distant planets to K-12 classrooms.
Out-of-this-world research
Jackson started dreaming of other planets early in life. He recalls reading Jill Paton Walsh’s “The Green Book” in elementary school. The novella depicts human colonists from Earth landing on another planet.
“I just loved the idea of being in a place where there were some similarities to Earth, but then these really fundamental differences,” he said. “It’s fair to say that got me hooked on the idea of studying planets.”
Now, as a physics professor at Boise State, Jackson is turning science fiction into reality. In 2024, he led a team of researchers who measured winds on Mars using data from NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. They were the first to take such measurements by drone on another planet.
The results were stunning. They showed wind speeds much higher than expected, derived from previous ground-based instruments on Mars.
“We definitely expected Ingenuity to see somewhat higher speeds, but we really did not expect to see winds so much faster than what Perseverance [the Mars rover on the ground] saw,” Jackson said. “Maybe our atmospheric models need some major retuning. More work will help us figure it out.”
This research is even more impressive because Ingenuity was a proof-of-concept vehicle, not a fully developed research platform. It had no built-in wind sensors, so Jackson and his team had to innovate and use engineering data from the helicopter to calculate wind speeds.
Before 2021, nobody had ever flown an aircraft on another planet. Now they’re the future of planetary exploration. Jackson’s research could be the first of many atmospheric studies on other planets in our Solar System.
The next generation
Progress in astronomy can take decades, and Jackson is keenly aware that he may not live to see some of his scientific dreams come true. Projects like long-term human habitation on Mars will have to wait for the next generation. Some of those future scientists are in Jackson’s classroom today.
Jackson’s latest project, the NSF-supported IDAstro Program, has connected four Idaho colleges with a newly built observatory at Bruneau Dunes State Park. The partnership lets Idaho undergraduate students work on real, impactful astronomy research under Idaho’s dark skies.
Jackson and his students monitor other stars in our galaxy for signs of exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. These exoplanets are often too small and dim to view directly from Earth. However, Jackson and his students can spot them indirectly when they move in front of their host stars, using the state-of-the-art telescope at Bruneau.
The effect is a miniature eclipse from our perspective on Earth, causing the star to dim for a short period while the planet moves across its bright disk. Think of a moth casting shadows as it flies in front of a lamp.
These tiny fluctuations in brightness are too small to see with the human eye, so Jackson’s student researchers are working at Bruneau to detect exoplanet transits using Bruneau’s brand-new 27.5-inch telescope. The result is practical research experience for astronomy students that leads to discoveries and helps them launch their careers.
Astronomy for all
Jackson gives back to the community in other ways. One of those is Astronomers-in-Training Assisting the Community, what Jackson and his team call AstroTAC. In 2021, Jackson won a $1 million award from NASA’s Science Activation Program for AstroTAC. Since then, the program has completed over 300 outreach events, sending Boise State students to Idaho schools from Post Falls to Pocatello, with hands-on astronomy learning activities and a mobile planetarium.
“We get a lot of oohs and aahs,” said junior Chandler Beasley, a Boise native majoring in physics with an astrophysics emphasis and secondary education. “The kids really like it. They really like what they’re learning, too.”
Teachers from any Idaho school can request a visit, but AstroTAC gives priority to rural schools. A visit can be eye-opening for rural students as the student-teachers open a window into Idaho’s night skies, which shine brilliantly in Idaho’s most remote regions.
“Most rural schools probably don’t have a distinct astronomy program,” said Benjamin Satterwhite, director of the Julius Jeker Planetarium at Capital High School in Boise. “They have science teachers who are teaching chemistry, biology and physics. Astronomy is a way they can bring all those together.”
A budget augmentation from NASA’s Science Activation Program allowed Jackson’s program to purchase 50 telescopes for Idaho classrooms under the coordination of Rachel Huchmala, a postdoctoral researcher working in Jackson’s group. Those telescopes are classroom resources for teachers, but the data they gather will come back to Boise State and aid in the search for more exoplanets.
AstroTAC is an incredible resource for Idaho teachers. It also gives hands-on career practice to Boise State students. Beasley hopes to begin a career as a science communicator after she graduates in 2026.
“I think long-term I would like to go into education outreach coordination,” Beasley said. “So kind of continuing what I’m doing now, but on a bigger scale.”
Whether he’s breaking new ground on Mars or delivering astronomy education to Idaho schools, Jackson is constantly working to make our vast universe more accessible to everyday Idahoans.
“I feel a deep gratitude to the citizens of Idaho and the U.S. for supporting our group’s work and letting us share a love of space. Seeing that enthusiasm reflected back whenever we visit a classroom, host a stargazing event, or give a public talk – it makes you realize that the colossal emptiness of space isn’t really empty at all. It’s full of dreams,” Jackson said.
First Friday Astronomy is a donor-supported lecture series. Find out how you can help at boi.st/astronomy