#aas245 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #aas245, aggregated by home.social.
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"[W]hile [astronomers] continue to work on satellite interference issues, they are expanding their work to other topics broadly associated with space sustainability. These issues range from the threat of obtrusive space advertising and reentries that interfere with their observations to the danger of confusing asteroids with flying Teslas."
Comprehensive reporting by @jeff_foust for @spacenews_inc on Dark & Quiet Skies at #AAS245.
https://spacenews.com/as-the-night-sky-grows-crowded-astronomers-face-a-growing-problem/
#Space #SpaceSustainability #DarkAndQuietSkies #SpaceAdvertising #SpaceDebris #Reentry #PlanetaryDefense #Astronomy
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Thanks to @skyandtelescope for publishing this story about light pollution and satellite impacts on the night sky resulting from our AAS Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment press briefing at #AAS245.
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And that's it for #AAS245.
I will now go back to a more sane posting volume.
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And the final talk of #AAS245 was the Berkeley Prize Lecture by Erik Tollerud, Clara Brasseur, and Kelle Cruz on Astropy.
In 2011, Tollerud was a grad student who wanted to write a unified library of astronomy packages. There were many astronomy packages, leading to duplicated work and incomparableness.
This somewhat naive desire started a discussion that eventually became the Astropy project.
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Next up the Heineman Prize Lecture at #AAS245 by John Carlstrom: Past, Present, and Future Cosmic Microwave Background Surveys.
I took an intro astronomy course from Carlstrom as an undergrad, so it was cool to see him up on the stage!
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And wrapping up my #AAS245 posts - Day 4
We started off the morning with Stella Offner's plenary Lecture: The Star Formation Engine.
Offner is part of the STARFORGE collaboration, which simulates the star formation process.
Star formation involves a lot of physics at a lot of scales — from gravity, magnetic fields, and turbulence that influence how gas collapses into stars, and stellar feedback processes that destroy the surrounding nebula.
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Found a photo of me from the American Astronomical Society's gallery this week at #aas245.
Even from the back, there's no doubt that's me.
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Found a photo of me from the American Astronomical Society's gallery this week at #aas245. Even from the back, there's no doubt that's me.
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Wrapping up day 3 of #AAS245 with the JWST town hall (yes, I know that it was Wednesday. In my defense, there was a lot going on).
JWST is awesome, working better than expected, scientifically productive, and has more than 20 years worth of propellant.
They don’t know what the ultimate lifetime will be, but want it to be multiple decades. They are confident all of the moving parts will work for at least 10 years.
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Next up at #AAS245 was the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize Lecture: The Evolution, Influence, and Ultimate Fate of Massive Stars by Maria Drout.
The study of massive stars has a long history. AAS is celebrating 125 years. Looking back at the first talk of the first meeting, it was on the spectra of stars.
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Next plenary at #AAS245, Revealing the Solar Neighborhood's Diversity and the Milky Way's Substellar Halo by Aaron Meisner
The WISE satellite made 20 all sky mappings in the infrared from 2009-2024.
Brown dwarfs are objects that are somewhere between a star and a planet. Nearby brown dwarfs show up in WISE data — their signature is red WISE color + high proper motion (movement in the sky between observations).
Meisner: "I am the only person in the world who has downloaded my own personal copy of all 60 million WISE observations"
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Catching up on more from #AAS245 day 3
Giada Arney's plenary lecture: Are We Alone? The Search for Life on Habitable Worlds
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA's next flagship mission concept. It's the first telescope designed to look for signs of life on planets outside of the solar system. It's a “super Hubble” that also has ultraviolet, visible, and infrared capabilities. It can do all of the science we do with Hubble and more.
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Scott Engle - Detailing the Evolution of Red Dwarfs, and the Consequences for their Hosted Exoplanets, in Support of the Rocky Worlds DDT Program
M stars have a magnetic clock. They will slow down rotation due to stellar winds. But, we have to find stars with known ages to calibrate this. This is easier for very young and old stars, but not stars in the middle.
In the middle use common proper motion pairs, get the age of the companion, and use that to date the M star.
With the age/rotation relation down, you can measure the rotation rate of any M star, and get an age estimate. Then you can determine how the activity of M stars changes with age. #AAS245
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Kevin France - UV and X-ray Observations of Rocky Planet M Dwarf Host Stars: Inputs for Atmospheric Photochemistry and Escape Calculations
Higher energy light, X-ray and Extreme UV (EUV), ionizes the atmospheres of planets. This puffs up the atmosphere and leads to mass loss.
The cosmic shoreline is the cumulative effects of EUV over time. However, the cosmic shoreline is calibrated on the Sun, which has a different history of X-rays than M stars. #AAS245
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Rafael Luque - RV characterization of planets of interest to the Rocky Worlds DDT by MAROON-X and CARMENE
Radial velocity (RV) measurements give you eccentricity, which will save JWST observing time by giving you a better estimate of the transit time. Even for planets with known or well-studied masses, RV measurements will give you better constraints. #AAS245
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Alessandro Sozzetti - RV characterization of planets of potential interest to the Rocky Worlds DDT by ESPRESSO
Showed RV measurement of several planets from ESPRESSO. Since these are very difficult measurements to make, the more data the better. Sozzetti advocates including planets from the K2-3 system, which seem to lie exactly on the shoreline. #AAS245
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Jegug Ih - Do Rocky Planets around M Stars Have Atmospheres? A Statistical Approach to the Cosmic Shoreline
Hypotheses to test:
1) No planets have atmospheres
2) Atmospheres are random
3) Cosmic Shoreline hypothesis - a line dividing those with atmospheres and those without.Statistically speaking, picking the highest signal-to-noise targets may not be the best way to confirm the cosmic shoreline. It is better to go wide, rather than deep, and follow up on promising targets with GO time. #AAS245
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Next was the special session on the STScI-led Rocky Worlds DDT Program: a search for atmospheres on rocky exoplanets around M-dwarfs.
Brandon Coy - Atmospheric Theoretical Expectations for Rocky Worlds DDT Discoveries.
Images taken with the MIRI 1500W can identify candidate atmospheres around planets, but there is a risk of false positives. So, follow-up observations are needed to confirm. #AAS245 -
I managed to snag this cool puzzle thanks to Dylan Paré from Villanova!
It features a Herschel and MeerKAT image of the center of the Milky Way, with polarization lines from FIREPLACE (a SOFIA 214 um legacy survey). #AAS245 -
And the #AAS245 conference is over, but I've still got two days worth of notes. Now that I've gotten some sleep, I'm going to continue the summary posts. Too much was going on!
To start off day 3 we had the Rossi Prize Lecture by Martin Weisskopf and Paolo Soffitta on The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).
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Later today (around 2:35pm EST/1935 UTC), I will present in a @aas_office press briefing on recent space policy statements by the AAS Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (COMPASSE). The event will be livestreamed on: https://www.youtube.com/c/AASPressOffice
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Also NRAO was giving away ice cream on Tuesday night at their booth at #AAS245.
Hot take (cool take?): More booths should give away ice cream (and throw in some vegan options).
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Final talk of the day at #AAS245, the Annie Jump Cannon Prize Lecture from Jenny Bergner, The Icy Origins of Planetary Systems.
Stars and planets form out of cold, dusty molecular gas.
Planets form from disks around their stars. The composition of that gas influences the chemistry of the planets forming within.
ALMA can observe the cold dust in the disks as well as molecules.
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The next plenary in #AAS245 was by Shouleh Nikzad - A Detector Backstory: How Silicon Detectors Came to Enable Space Missions.
Silicon detectors are a multibillion-dollar industry (see the camera in your phone), but they are not natural ultraviolet light detectors. How can we use them for ultraviolet science?
Silicon detectors are the imagers for most modern visible light telescopes, innovations allow bigger detectors.
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More from Day 2 of #AAS245
STScI Town Hall
Roman is on track to launch in October 2026 - Prepare now for the flood of data and analyzing the data on the cloud in the Roman Reseach Nexus.JWST is performing better than expected and is hugely scientifically productive. More people were PIs or CoIs on JWST proposals than are at the AAS meeting. However, it is in danger of budget cuts starting October 2025.
Hubble is the second most in-demand telescope in NASA astrophysics, but faces very severe budget cuts.
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Exciting times at #AAS245, as Lea Marcotulli prepares to present at a press conference on some super-exciting #NuSTAR + @ChandraScience results on the early universe
(I'm co-corresponding author on the paper, so I may be a little biased...)
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Goodbye #AAS244 and #MadisonWI.
I had fun and learned a lot. I also ate a lot of cheese.
See you all at #AAS245! -
Goodbye #AAS244 and #MadisonWI.
I had fun and learned a lot. I also ate a lot of cheese.
See you all at #AAS245! -
Goodbye #AAS244 and #MadisonWI.
I had fun and learned a lot. I also ate a lot of cheese.
See you all at #AAS245! -
Goodbye #AAS244 and #MadisonWI.
I had fun and learned a lot. I also ate a lot of cheese.
See you all at #AAS245! -
Goodbye #AAS244 and #MadisonWI.
I had fun and learned a lot. I also ate a lot of cheese.
See you all at #AAS245!