After recovering from Monday’s exertions, I began my second day at the 218th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting feeling fresh. Science, especially relating to the worlds around other stars, seemed to be more in focus Tuesday, though amateurs still had their moments to shine.
A simple device mimics a system of transiting exoplanets, helping illustrate exactly what the Kepler mission looks for. // Bill Andrews photo
For instance, the first of the day’s talks, “The Pan-STARRS Wide-Field Imaging Survey” by Nicholas Keiser of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, ended with a question from the audience about the possible assistance that a citizen science project like Galaxy Zoo could provide. Keiser enthusiastically agreed, saying, “Getting non-astronomers involved in astronomy seems to be a highly productive thing.” The talk itself was all about the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS for short: its specs, goals, and some of its first data and results. (Its biggest aim is to search for potentially life-destroying asteroids, and so far, so good: “None of them are going to hit us,” Keiser said. “Yet.”)
But a conference isn’t all talks and field trips — one of my favorite parts of these things is talking face to face at the poster sessions with some of the people actually doing science. The Kepler mission and its exoplanet search figured prominently in my day’s plans, so I chatted with some of the representatives from SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and Kepler, even getting a chance to play with a simple model of an exoplanet system. By turning a small crank, visitors could move two pea-sized planets around a light bulb, with a nearby light detector showing the corresponding drop in brightness from the transitions across the “star.” What a nifty way to show what Kepler looks for!
I also got a chance to speak with Prabal (rhymes with “trouble”) Saxena of George Mason University, who presented a poster about one of the most distant moons in the solar system, titled “An External Source for Charon’s Atmosphere: Accretion of Pluto’s Atmosphere.” It’s an exciting theory, and not just because it will be experimentally verified (or not) when NASA’s New Horizons probe reaches the Pluto-Charon system in 2015. If Saxena is right, this process of atmospheric accretion could have a significant impact on planetary science. (He also said Astronomy magazine helped him get interested in the subject to begin with; neat!)
The poster sessions at the 218th meeting of the American Astronomical Society are among my favorite events — you never know what interesting research you’ll come across! // Elizabeth Andrews photo
Next up was the day’s first official exoplanet talk, “Kepler and the Architecture of Planetary Systems,” which detailed some of the
newly discovered properties of the multi-planet systems the Kepler mission has uncovered. “I should be saying ‘planet candidates,' ” said the first speaker, David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he felt almost all of them would prove to be actual planets anyway. Astronomers can now calculate the various eccentricities, orbital resonances, and orbital inclinations of planets within the nearly 200 known multi-exoplanet systems, which are all important in theorizing their formation. The final speaker of this session, Jason Steffen of Fermilab in Illinois, suspects there will turn out to be “more than one way to form a planetary system.”
Things got a little emotional during the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, as both AAS President Debra Elmegreen and the honoree Margaret Geller of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, remembered their longtime friend and collaborator, former AAS President John Huchra. He was supposed to introduce Geller, but his October death took everyone by surprise, so both speakers understandably struggled to keep their composure at times. Geller even went so far as to honor Huchra with a moment of silence, and it was clear she was dedicating the lecture to him. Titled “Mapping the Universe with Redshift Surveys and Weak Lensing,” the actual talk detailed Geller and Huchra’s early exploration of the universe, and the structures they discovered. Some of the details were a little dense, and when Geller at one point said, “Nothing is simple when you’re observing the universe,” I couldn’t help but agree.
After lunch, I headed to a session devoted to various ways of promoting “Astronomy Education & Public Outreach,” a subject Astronomy knows a little something about. All kinds of great ideas came up, from top-down NASA initiatives, to plans to get kids not just excited about science but actually performing real research, to suggestions for college cosmology curricula, re-evaluating what we mean by a “learning disability,” to an individual working hard to promote astronomy to those who might not have expected to like it (this last was Astronomy guest blogger Donald Lubowich of Hofstra University). It’s great to see so much interest in making sure the public stays interested.
This “family portrait” displays all the planet candidates the Kepler Mission has found as they transit (orbit in front of) their parent star, with our Sun and Jupiter displayed alone in the second row. // Photo by NASA/Kepler Science Team/Jason Rowe
Next was a double dose of heavy science. First, Chris Carilli and Rick Perley, both of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico, tag-teamed through their talk, “
Early Science with the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA).” Carilli shared some of the science that’s already come from the 30-year-old array’s total overhaul, “effectively re-imagining” what’s possible in terms of studying star formation, molecular gas, and some of the most distant galaxies; Perley stuck to the upgrades and what they mean for future research, even going so far as to provide a “how to” on scheduling observing time on the EVLA.
Immediately following that was the day’s last session on exoplanets, “Extrasolar Planets: Detection and Characterization.” Now that astronomers have had a few months to play with the extensive Kepler data (released in February), they can make ever more interesting conclusions on the subject (such as the claim from William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, that nearly every candidate star will have, on average, 0.34 planet orbiting it). With the Spitzer Space Telescope helping characterize these potential other worlds and ever-improving technology to find a needle-like planet in haystack-like dusty debris, the future of exoplanet research looks bright — no wonder there’s always so many people at these talks!
The day’s final event was the SPD Hale Prize lecture, “The Sun’s Magnetic Surface,” given by Hendrik Spruit of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. Not too many people attended the talk, which is too bad because they missed the random free food that accompanied it (Asian appetizers before and cakes after). Spruit discussed a few ideas behind solar behavior, and frankly described the problems behind much of the standard views. “Observations rule out the main types of models,” he said, insisting that “the magnetic field is not weak!” This alters current views behind sunspot formation and the importance of convection and diffusion in modeling behavior at the Sun’s surface. Spruit acknowledged that his views have their problems, too, but he jovially made it clear that the standard views were more wrong.
And that was Tuesday! It’s hard to believe there’s just one more full day left, but I’ll do my best to keep you updated. And, as always, be sure to follow my live tweets from the conference on @AstronomyMag (#AAS218).
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