Special guest blog from Contributing Editor Martin Ratcliffe President Barack Obama and his family joined 150 school children, dozens of amateur astronomers, professional scientists, and education and public outreach professionals Wednesday night during the Star Party at the White House. And how cool was this? “Cool” doesn’t even come close. I was lucky to be a part of the exciting events running one of the planetarium domes set up on the South Lawn...

Thursday was a short day at the conference. I had to check out of the hotel in the late morning, so I had time only to jump between two sessions (another exoplanet one, and one about near-Earth asteroids [NEAs]). E ditor's note: Liz is posting updates regularly from DPS09 to Twitter.com/AstronomyMag . The exoplanet session focused on what I’ve noticed to be an extremely popular topic here at the conference — modeling exoplanet atmospheres. That...

I started off Wednesday at a lunar science session where presenters focused on results from the Japanese Kaguya mission and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) . Robert Reedy of the Planetary Science Institute discussed Kaguya maps of the Moon. The probe measured gamma rays to study the distribution of elements, and it produced the first global uranium map of the Moon. E ditor's note: Liz is posting updates regularly from DPS09 to Twitter.com...

One thing I’ve noticed at thisi year’s Division of Planetary Sciences meeting is how well members of the planetary science community support each other. Often when asking a question regarding a talk, the questioner starts out with “great talk.” It’s refreshing to see. There’s a lot of competition in the sciences (so much of a career rides on how many papers one publishes), but clearly there’s a lot of collaboration as well. E ditor's note: Liz...

Monday was my first day at the 2009 Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, I was off to a late start because of one of the worst migraines of my life. But I did get to the afternoon science sessions. E ditor's note: Liz is posting updates regularly from DPS09 to Twitter.com/AstronomyMag . I spent the early afternoon at the Titan science session. Nine scientists talked about the saturnian satellite’s atmosphere and...

This week I’m in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting. I’ll be blogging daily and posting updates regularly to our Twitter , Facebook , and MySpace pages. Then on Saturday I’ll have the opportunity to tour Arecibo Observatory, which is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It should be a good week, filled with lots of news, science updates, and humid temperatures.

Dwarf planet Haumea, out in the Kuiper Belt past Pluto and Eris, just got its big break. The formerly little-known object hit the big time Wednesday at the European Planetary Science Congress when Pedro Lacerda announced a dark red spot on its surface. And, not to copycat Jupiter and Neptune, Haumea ’s big spot (pictured in the computer model still at right) probably isn’t a giant storm. While the extreme distance between the object and us makes any...

Lunar and planetary imager Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York, just sent me a terrific animation he made of Saturn. And it took him a while to do it. Friedman combined 6 years of Saturn observations to create the animation. It shows how the plane of the planet’s ring system has changed during that time as viewed from Earth. The animation’s final frame is not an image Friedman captured at the telescope. He assembled that frame from earlier 2009 observations...

Just after midnight September 3 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) or just before midnight September 2 for the rest of the United States, a Jupiter event begins that any amateur astronomer with a telescope and a clear sky overhead can see. The king of planets will appear without a visible satellite for nearly 2 hours. You won’t be able to see such a sight again for a decade. The last of Jupiter’s four major satellites to disappear, Ganymede, begins to transit...

Each year Astronomy magazine publishes an article highlighting what we consider the top 10 astronomy stories of the previous year. I’ve started working on the article for 2009 and thought I’d share a few of our ideas for the big stories. We also want your feedback. So if there’s a story you feel strongly should be on our list, let us know! Of course, the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope has to be on this list. Reviving the aging telescope...