After many years without attending any of the American Astronomical Society or AAS meetings, this year I finally participated in the summer AAS #242; held in Albuquerque NM. It was nice to hear about the new developments in astronomy and to reconnect with many colleagues from within and outside work. Participating in these meetings was always interesting, but I stopped attending for personal reasons; my kids were young, and I had nobody to take care of them in my absence.
There are several things that make these meetings quite interesting. The AAS is an international organization of professional astronomers, astronomy educators, physicists, mathematicians, geologists, engineers, and even amateur astronomers eager to learn about current developments in astronomy. These meetings are a place to share news about a variety of astronomical fields, and for young scientists to connect with potential employers[1]. These are held twice a year and, as the meeting number indicates, it has been happening for many years.
The AAS was founded in 1899 by astronomer George Ellery Hale, creator of The Astrophysical Journal, and astronomer and applied mathematician Simon Newcomb. They established the AAS with several objectives in mind:
1) organize American astronomy within the realm of physics,
2) organize networks of observatories in cooperative research programs, and
3) define a new way for experienced and young astronomers to share methods and knowledge.
As the Society grew, the AAS instated several divisions to organize the diversity of astronomy fields and other astronomy-related sciences and to promote them within the overall charter of the AAS. Currently, the AAS includes the Division for Planetary Sciences, the Division on Dynamical Astronomy, the High Energy Astrophysics Division, the Solar Physics Division, the Historical Astronomy Division, and Laboratory Astrophysics Division.
The mission statement of the AAS states that it exists -- “to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community." The AAS actively collaborates with many groups to increase public support for scientific research, attract young people to careers in science and technology, and make evident the connections between science, technology, and prosperity
The AAS also owns several of the major and most important journals for astronomy, these include The Astrophysical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, The Astrophysical Journals Letters, The Astronomical Journal, and The Planetary Science Journal. Before January 1, 2022, all these journals were available only through an annual subscription; however, now these are accessible to anybody thanks to the new AAS open access policy
During the AAS #242, NASA shared its most recent work on the Transform to Open Science (TOPS) program, which provides the visibility, advocacy, and community resources to support and enable the shift to open science[2]. A group of scientists and instrument experts got together to discuss the innovative work that ground-based observatories are doing to improve their observing capabilities. At these talks, I learned how they plan to mitigate the effects of the Earth’s atmosphere in ground-based astronomical, solar, and planetary observations. Through a hybrid observing method, which involves using a satellite aligned with ground-based observations, they plan to increase the observing time and hence the precision and depth of images taken from the ground. The word hybrid comes from the fact that they are looking to combine ground-based telescopes with space-based satellites[3]. I also learned about new smaller missions and even missions within missions like ROLSES or Radio wave observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photon-Electron Sheath that will be operating from the Moon, and the MoonLITE: or Lunar InTerforometry Explorer also to be on the Moon.
There were many scientific talks, too many to cover them all here; so I will mention only a few of them. Dr. D. Scolnic from Duke University, who gave an overview of the observing history that has led to the more precise determination of the expansion history of the Universe. Another talk by Dr. B. Chen from the New Jersey Institute of Technology explained how solar flares are a great laboratory to study magnetic energy release in stars and how these can explain particle acceleration[4], which is a process found all over our Universe. Dr. M. Wadhwa from Arizona State University gave a wonderful talk about the exploration of the solar system via missions that have returned samples from the moon and asteroids. Dr. Wadhwa also discussed the plans to retrieve samples from Mars and what we will learn from them. Finally, I would mention the talk given by Dr. E. Bergin from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In this presentation, Dr. Bergin provided an overview of how the planets are born and what we can learn about their formation by looking at their content of Carbon.
You might ask about my contribution at the AAS 242. This time I chose to present a poster informing scientists where to find the most important documentation about the software we develop at STScI to calibrate the JWST data, caveats and artifacts of the current calibration products, and how to gain access to their data. My focus was on showing the best ways to navigate this documentation and how users can keep updates to changes to software and data.
There is so much one can learn at these meetings. Besides learning what scientist are doing to interpret the data in order to find a scientific explanation about the observed phenomena in celestial bodies and even our own Earth, we also learn that there is a great effort invested in obtaining this data and making it available to scientists.
References:
1 https://aas.org/about/mission-and-vision-statement
2 https://aas.org/about/origins-aas
3 E. Peretz, C. Hamilton, J.C. Mather, S. D’Amico, A. Michaels, R. Pritchett, W. Yu, P. Wizinowich 2022, Journal-of-Astronomical-Telescopes-Instruments-and-Systems/volume-8/issue-1
4 AAS 242 and https://binchensun.org/project/acceleration/