Editor’s Note: This week we’re at the 240th AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA, and online. Along with a team of authors from Astrobites, we will be writing updates on selected events at the meeting and posting each day. Follow along here or at astrobites.com for daily summaries, or follow @astrobites on Twitter for live coverage. The usual posting schedule for AAS Nova will resume on June 21st.

Table of Contents:

• Historical Astronomy Divison Doggett Prize: William Donahue (St. John’s College / Green Lion Press)
• Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer: Initial Results
• Imaging the Nearest Supermassive Black Hole, Sgr A*, with the Event Horizon Telescope
• Press Conference: Nearby Disks, Faraway Galaxies & a Record-Breaking Star
• Plenary Lecture: Thomas Zurbuchen (Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate)
• Press Conference: Galactic Neighbors & Insights from ALMA
• Henry Norris Russell Lecture: Nicholas Scoville (Caltech)
• Laboratory Astrophysics Division Plenary Speaker: Dennis Bodewits (Auburn University)

Historical Astronomy Divison Doggett Prize: William Donahue (St. John’s College / Green Lion Press) (by Graham Doskoch)

One of the most influential works in the history of astronomy is Johannes Kepler’s Astronomia Nova. Published in 1609, the book presents data and calculations that support Kepler’s theories about the motion of the planets, lending support to the heliocentric model. While nowadays it is widely accepted that planets move in elliptical orbits, Astronomia Nova was the first work to make such a claim.

Like many scientific treatises of the age, Astronomia Nova was written in Latin. Translating the 500-page tome to English is a monumental task — one that Prof. William Donahue, now of St. John’s College, took on four decades ago. His first version was published in 1992, with a revised edition released in 2015, and it has strongly influenced most English-language studies of Kepler’s book. Completing the project required an intimate knowledge of the text and, as Prof. Donahue admits, a love of untangling complicated arguments and figures.

Prof. Donahue gave Tuesday morning’s plenary lecture after being honored with the Doggett Prize as recognition of his lengthy career making the history of astronomy more accessible — including his work on translating Astronomia Nova and Kepler’s treatise on optics, Astronomiae Pars Optica. In this talk, Prof. Donahue chose not to guide us through the book but rather to go through two pages of Kepler’s calculations, imagining we were looking over Kepler’s shoulder as he wrote one April morning.

The pages in question describe Kepler’s work on reconciling observations with two hypotheses: the “vicarious hypothesis,” influenced by Ptolemy and a classical understanding of planetary motion, and the “physical hypothesis,” which is influenced more by Kepler’s perspective, viewing orbits as being governed by physics and gravity, where planets traveled at different speeds at different points in their orbits. Kepler had observational data at his disposal thanks to important observations by Tycho Brahe. His method was to compare the predictions of both hypotheses against Brahe’s observations of Mars, tweaking parameters in the physical hypothesis to match at different points in the orbit.

Kepler — after making several mistakes and typos, some of which were notably crossed out -— came to the conclusion that the two models differ significantly at certain positions in Mars’s orbit, and both failed to adequately reproduce the observations. The vicarious hypothesis, for instance, was off by an angular distance of 9 minutes of arc at one point.

After some thinking, Kepler realized that the physical hypothesis could be saved if he made the assumption that orbits were elliptical. We now know this as Kepler’s First Law, and it forms a key part of orbital dynamics and studies of exoplanets and multiple-star systems. Before this point, however, it hadn’t occurred to him. It took lengthy calculations, not to mention typos, incorrect multiplications, and minus sign errors, but Kepler did arrive at one of the pillars of astronomy. Although it may have taken 500 pages to fully explain and justify, this journey can be traced through merely two sides of what Prof. Donahue simply describes as “the most fascinating piece of paper in the universe.”

See live-tweets of this session here, by Graham Doskoch.

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Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer: Initial Results (by Graham Doskoch and Briley Lewis)

Artist’s rendition of IXPE in space. [NASA/IXPE]

Launched on December 9th, 2021 on a SpaceX rocket, it has a 2-year baseline mission, with plans for 3 or more years of general observer time and an 18-year orbit lifetime. This mission uses X-ray optics and a gas pixel detector to record the polarization (or orientation) of the high-energy light, while also taking images and doing spectroscopy. After launch, IXPE had to go through rigorous calibration since it uses cutting-edge technology, but now it’s been steadily operating for around six months and it’s returning its first science results. The first speaker, Brian Ramsey (NASA/MSFC), emphasized that this is an exciting time — after 50 years since the first X-ray polarization measurement of the famous Crab Nebula, sensitive X-ray polarimetry capabilities have arrived. And now, we could detect the Crab at an incredible 100 sigma!

Today’s press conference discussed multiple exciting new observations, but many of them are currently under a press embargo, meaning we can’t share them with you today. But believe us — there are some very cool papers coming very soon!

One study we can tell you about is the first X-ray polarization detection of Cassiopeia A, a core collapse supernova that’s about 350 years old. Today, Riccardo Ferrazzoli (INAF-IAPS) recapped this finding, which was just published on the arXiv. Using IXPE, we can probe not only the magnetic field but also the turbulence of this interesting object. They had two goals in the study: (1) to see how the degree of polarization in X-rays from IXPE compares with the degree of polarization in radio observations and (2) to investigate the structure of the magnetic field, asking: is it tangential, radial, random? So far, they have a fairly modest 5-sigma detection — a hint of polarization. The degree of polarization is low as well, only ~2-5% depending on what effects you account for. Yet, they did find evidence that the magnetic field is radial!

Herman Marshall (MIT) concluded by reminding us that this is only one of the many sources IXPE will study, and quite a few other sources are in the planning or exploratory phase right now. They’re looking at a diverse range of objects, and there’s plenty of interesting science ahead for this new mission!

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Imaging the Nearest Supermassive Black Hole, Sgr A*, with the Event Horizon Telescope (by Sabina Sagynbayeva)

The first image of Sgr A*. [EHT Collaboration]

The first speaker, Dr. Sera Markoff, gave us an overview of the EHT collaboration. The collaboration has over 300 scientists in over 80 institutions around the globe. Dr. Markoff also reminded us that EHT is not like a usual telescope. In fact, it is not actually a telescope at all  rather it is a collection of different observatories around the world that are all strung together. The next speakers go into more detail about the physics and image processing of the exciting result.

Dr. Daryl Haggard gave us multi-wavelength insights into Sgr A*. Dr. Haggard pointed out that the best data sets came out from observing runs on April 6th and April 7th in 2017, therefore most plots shown today had those two dates on them. The amplitudes of the final data product are well described by a ~50-microarcsecond ring model, which is the angular diameter of the ring! The data also showed a very interesting variability in its light curve. It turns out that Sgr A* is way more variable than M87* (the previously imaged black hole). So, intrinsic source variability is likely present, but they do not conclusively establish variability on resolved scales. To sum up the comparison between M87* and Sgr A* (which are very different!), here’s a great table provided by Dr. Haggard:

Next speaker, Dr. Kazunori Akiyama, told us about the whole complexity behind the image processing. One of the most important assets to obtain the images was Earth’s rotation! Because of this rotation, you can get data from different angles (sort of like looking at things from different perspectives), but not only that, you can also get more data that samples different size scales to reconstruct an image from the sparse data. They have three complicated and code-heavy techniques for the image processing that consider their Gaussian noises mostly uncorrelated. Different prescriptions have been used to account for scattering effects by the interstellar medium and mitigation of the rapid intra-day variability. They conclude that the EHT Sgr A* data show compelling evidence for an image that is dominated by a bright 50-microarcsecond ring, consistent with the expected “shadow” of the galactic center supermassive black hole!

Dr. Chi-Kwan Chan was talking about the physics behind the image (also on behalf of Dr. Feryal Ozel). In order to address most of the physics, they needed to consider magnetic fields and general relativity (magnetohydrodynamics [MHD] and general relativistic MHD [GRMHD]) in the context of hydrodynamics. In all the artistic renditions of black holes, you will see an accretion disk, but a thin accretion disk is not a good model for Sgr A*. The standard “good” model is an optically thick and geometrically thin disk. The physics analysis shows that the accretion flow is dominated by a magnetic field (magnetically arrested disk, MAD) and that it is possibly prograde. They also compared their image with the Kerr black hole to check general relativity. The key distinguishing characteristic is the size of the ring/shadow. It turns out the size of the imaged black hole is consistent with Kerr predictions to within ~10%!

Last but not the least, Dr. Dominic Pesce talked about morphologies. Their technique, called geometric modeling, provides a useful low-dimensional representation of the Sgr A* image structure: an exploration of simple geometric source models demonstrates that ring-like morphologies provide better fits to the Sgr A* data than other morphologies with comparable complexity. Two schemes have been employed to mitigate the impact of Sgr A* variability during model-fitting: 1) a “snapshot” approach that fits only to individual short segments of data during which Sgr A* can be reasonably approximated as static, then averages the fits to each segment. 2) a “full-track” approach that fits the average structure of the entire data set at once, while also simultaneously characterizing the fluctuations about that average via a parametrized model. Their schemes helped them to calibrate the relationship between measured diameter and gravitational radius using GRMHD simulations.

See live-tweets of this session here, by Sabina Sagynbayeva.

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Press Conference: Nearby Disks, Faraway Galaxies & a Record-Breaking Star (by Briley Lewis)

Panelists lined up before the press conference begins. [Briley Lewis]

A chart showing that the “extreme” debris disk discovered is an outlier with higher luminosity. Click to enlarge. [Marc Kuchner]

A diagram of the debris disk, illustrating the disk offset from the star (which indicates eccentricity) and the brighter apocenter. [Meredith MacGregor]

Changing gears a bit to galaxies, Chris Conselice (Univ. of Manchester) showed new data that probes galaxy formation at high redshifts, z > 6. A big question in galactic astronomy is how the galaxies we see grew out of the early universe. We have an idea on the when, but the how still escapes us. To investigate this question, Conselice and collaborators wanted to ask a related question: Do galaxy mergers happen in the past as well? Is this how galaxies grow? Through their REFINE survey (Redshift Evolution and Formation in Extragalactic Systems), they looked for pairs of galaxies across distance/time to see if there were more mergers in the past. They also considered star formation in order to see which builds galaxies — star formation, or mergers. The result? Mergers dominate in the early universe, and star formation comes later! JWST will soon help us explore this further, so lots to look forward to.

Slide from Xin Wang’s talk showing a deep field photo containing more than 5,000 galaxies. [Xin Wang/NASA/Hubble]

Last, but certainly not least, Sumner Starrfield (ASU) presented on V1674 Her — the fastest nova ever seen! Novae are particularly important, since they make all sorts of important things in the universe, like cosmic rays and lithium (which is incredibly important for our smartphones and tech here on Earth!). So, what makes a nova fast? How quickly its light dims after the initial burst. This can be an indication of a particularly massive white dwarf in the binary system that causes the nova outburst. V1674 Her broke the speed record, but that record has been broken many times — and the Vera Rubin Observatory is likely to break it again soon, as we become able to see even shorter transients with this incredible new telescope.

See live-tweets of this session here, by Briley Lewis.

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Plenary Lecture: Thomas Zurbuchen (Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate) (by Yoni Brande)

The second plenary of the day was presented by Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Dr. Zurbuchen highlighted some of the recommendations of the recent Astro2020 Decadal Survey and argued that NASA needs to succeed in five domains in order to build effective teams and truly lead the way into the future of astrophysics.

Astrophysics as a field is at a crucial moment. The recent launch of JWST and the upcoming launch of the Roman Space Telescope are examples of the forefront of our current capabilities. The Astro2020 Great Observatories have the potential to revolutionize astrophysics, and we have to build up our communities to ensure that such missions succeed.

Communities

Zurbuchen pointed out the Decadal’s equity, diversity, and inclusion recommendations, noting that some of the NASA leaders now recognized for their pivotal contributions were fighting uphill battles when they started out decades ago. Failing to address bigotry like racism and sexism hurts people, and it also affects scientific progress. Following this, NASA recently implemented dual-anonymous peer review across its proposal streams, which has already made a significant impact in reducing gender and racial bias in awards, as well as increasing the number of awards made to early career scientists.

Focus

Zurbuchen said that NASA also needs to continue to focus on the future, even if it means ending well-loved missions. The Spitzer Space Telescope, which stuck around for years after its active coolant ran out, ended its mission in 2020, and NASA is ending the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) in order to apply some of these resources to future projects.

Prioritize

By prioritizing strategic mission goals, Zurbuchen said that NASA can make sure ambitious projects like Mars Sample Return succeed.

Innovate

NASA has only been able to do its work because of significant technological innovation. Lessons learned from previous missions will inform future projects. If JWST was mostly purpose-built, and needed nearly a year of continuous system modeling to succeed, can NASA leverage new launch technologies and economies of scale to build cheaper, more robust observatories? Zurbuchen says yes, pointing to the massive increase in launch capability in the market now, as well as budding human serviceability and on-orbit assembly capabilities and improvements in sensor technology.

Partner

Zurbuchen outlined the partnerships NASA has made both with industry partners and international partners, both critical to current missions and future missions. Next gen telescopes will be more like JWST, with private, academic, and international stakeholders providing engineering and scientific expertise. NASA can both continue to be a leader in the field as well as a partner to help other institutions succeed. The future of astrophysics lies in collaborative science and open data.

Unite

He ended his talk with a quote from Maya Angelou: “In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

See live-tweets of this session here, by Yoni Brande.

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Press Conference: Galactic Neighbors & Insights from ALMA (by Yoni Brande)

The last press conference for today focused on galaxies and observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), featuring Astrobiter Katya Gozman (University of Michigan), Eric Bell (University of Michigan), Janvi Madhani and Charlotte Welker (The Johns Hopkins University), Hollis Akins (Grinnell College), and Ambesh Singh (University of Arizona).

Katya Gozman started us off with some exciting results and a presentation titled “An Extragalactic Fossil Record: M94’s Merger History through its Stellar Halo.” M94 is a nearby spiral galaxy with a very large stellar halo, which may have evidence of past galactic mergers. In order to identify M94’s merger history, Katya and her team used the Subaru Observatory’s Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument to observe the stars in M94’s halo as well as the galaxy’s internal structure. M94 has a particularly large pseudobulge, which makes up about about half of its total mass, and its stellar halo is fairly low mass and low metallicity. If M94 had been through some energetic mergers in the past, its halo should be a lot more massive and metal rich. However, it’s not just the halos that are related to mergers, but also the galaxy’s internal structure. The team also compared M94 to another galaxy, M101. These have similar halo masses, but vastly different bulge masses, implying that M94’s significant internal structure must have been built by some other process than mergers!

Next up was Eric Bell presenting new results with a presentation titled “Building Out the Census of Faint and Ultra-Faint Satellites of Milky Way-Mass Galaxies: New Satellites-of-Satellites in the M81 Group.” His group also used the Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam, but studied the M81 galaxy group. M81 has several large satellite galaxies, but Eric used Subaru’s sensitivity to find lots of small, faint, unresolved galaxies in the same field. By cleverly identifying those at the same distance as M81, the team found one new dwarf satellite and several candidate dwarf satellites. These small faint galaxies will need space-based imaging from Hubble or JWST to resolve their stars and confirm their nature, but if confirmed would be among the least luminous galaxies yet found outside our own Local Group! In addition, the distribution of the dwarf satellites is notably asymmetric, centered on one of the larger satellites. Perhaps M81 tends to destroy its own satellites over time and these are more recent additions to the group.

Third in this session were Janvi Madhani and Charlotte Welker with their talk, “Are Planes of Satellite Galaxies as Elusive in Simulations as Previously Thought?” Satellite galaxies are often observed in thin coplanar streams, coherently orbiting their host galaxies. Previous simulations have struggled to reproduce these at their observed fractions. Janvi and Charlotte conducted new, higher resolution surveys to try and fix this. With the same cosmology and gravity models as previous studies and only higher resolution simulations, they were able to finally create these observed streams consistent with observations.

The last in-person presentation was from Hollis Akins and was titled “ALMA Reveals Extended Cool Gas and Hot Ionized Outflows in a Distant Star-Forming Galaxy.” Galaxies aren’t just made up of stars, but also significant amounts of interstellar gas. This gas in the interstellar medium (ISM) is constantly reprocessed into stars and replenished by supernovae, and it is also continually exchanged with the circumgalactic medium. Hollis and his team used ALMA to observe the distant galaxy A1689-zD1, which is 13 billion light-years away, in order to study its gas content. The team found very different distributions of hot/ionized and cold/neutral ISM gas in the galaxy, with compact hot gas and much more extended cold gas. This could be an effect of previous mergers, or it could be driven by gas outflows from processes in the galaxy itself. ALMA spectroscopy showed that the hot gas in the core of the center of the galaxy was being blown outward, implying that as the gas flows, it cools to form the unexpected extended neutral gas feature!

The final talk of the day was online from Ambesh Singh, titled “ALMA Reveals the Molecular Outflows in the Ejecta of VY Canis Majoris.” VY Canis Majoris is a hypergiant star with a mass greater than 20 solar masses, and it is subject to intense sporadic mass-loss events. The team searched the gaseous envelope of the star for evidence of particular molecules that may be able to trace some of these mass-loss events. Using ALMA, they were able to identify particular molecules (such as lots of carbon-bearing species, water, salt, etc.), including some that are biologically important (like phosphorus monoxide)! By taking different images at different frequencies, the team found that each molecule was associated with different expanding gaseous shells, implying they came from different mass-loss events!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Yoni Brande.

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Henry Norris Russell Lecture: Nicholas Scoville (Caltech) (by Graham Doskoch)

If you look around the universe, you can tell that galaxies are an incredibly diverse bunch. There are spirals and irregular galaxies, giant ellipticals and dwarf spheroidals, green peas and luminous red galaxies. Yet in this wild and wonderful zoo, patterns emerge: trends across cosmic time. In one of this afternoon’s plenary lectures, Prof. Nicholas Scoville presented results that show how galaxy populations changed as the universe grew and evolved, viewed through the lens of a simple but ubiquitous tool: gas!

Molecular gas is extremely important. Much of it exists in the interstellar medium, with some of it lying in the form of giant molecular clouds, or GMCs. These massive structures can weigh in at hundreds of thousands of solar masses. They’re well known among astronomers for forming stars, as well as for blocking many observations within the galactic plane; the dust within GMCs causes enormous amounts of interstellar extinction. To illustrate this, Prof. Scoville pointed out that if the solar system lay inside a large molecular cloud, Earthbound astronomers wouldn’t be able to see any stars.

GMCs — or, more precisely, the gas they contain — are useful tools for extragalactic astronomers. It turns out that the mass of gas in a galaxy is related to some of its other properties. By searching for spectral line emission from GMCs, such as carbon monoxide (CO), astronomers can measure a galaxy’s gas mass and uncover these relationships. Unfortunately, at high redshifts, only certain parts of this CO emission are visible, corresponding to only the hotter gas. In his plenary talk, Prof. Scoville presented an alternative: looking for the long-wavelength spectral “tail” produced by dust within GMCs and other gas reservoirs, allowing him to trace gas in a broader range of temperatures.

By doing so, he uncovered several trends. For example, galaxies in the early universe had more gas than the Milky Way — often by factors of 10 or 100! They also had higher star formation efficiencies. This led to high star formation rates — at least until gas reservoirs were depleted; it’s a well-known trend that star formation peaked when the universe was a few billion years old, a time known as “cosmic noon.” Prof. Scoville also found that some galaxies with high star formation efficiencies were starburst galaxies, likely resulting from galactic mergers. As he pointed out, it’s possible that this is because the collisions compressed gas clouds, making it easier for them to fragment and form even more stars.

Prof. Scoville finished by acknowledging the astronomers who played a role in these studies and related projects over the years, from the team at the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) he founded to the scientists and engineers who designed, built and operate the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, which has been instrumental to this work.

See live-tweets of this session here, by Graham Doskoch.

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Laboratory Astrophysics Division Plenary Speaker: Dennis Bodewits (Auburn University) (by Pratik Gandhi)

The final plenary talk for the day featured Prof. Dennis Bodewits, who talked about “Comets as Natural Laboratories” for this year’s annual Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) plenary talk. Dr. Bodewits is a professor at Auburn University originally from the Netherlands, with an asteroid (Asteroid 10033 ‘Bodewits’) named after him by the International Astronomical Union!

Right from the very beginning, Dr. Bodewits emphasised that understanding the formation, composition, and evolution of comets is crucial to a variety of endeavours, including solar system formation, planetary science, astrochemistry, geophysics, and more. Since comets are leftover building blocks from the solar system’s early days, they often encode information that can shed light on how the solar system formed in the first place. Two key questions are: (a) what are their primordial properties, and (b) how do comets evolve over billions of years?

Through observations, the community has been able to identify ~50 different atoms/molecules in and around comets, which are often extremely useful for probing the properties of the comets themselves. Dr. Bodewits then pulled out the main idea behind the talk: over scales ranging from the comet’s nucleus to its outer atmosphere, there are a few main kinds of reactions that are useful to study.

The first is resonant fluorescent emission (RFE) where “parent molecules” like H₂O and CO₂ come out of the nucleus, are excited by sunlight, and re-emit the light that we can then detect — this tells us how many molecules there might be. RFE can also occur from “fragment species” that occur when H₂O or CO₂ break up into smaller atoms/molecules. The second reaction is prompt emissive photodissociation (EP), where H₂O and CO₂ coming off the nucleus can get hit by sunlight immediately and split up, resulting in different energy states and spectra than from RFE. Some gases like CO₂ and O₂ can be studied using observations of atomic oxygen that arises from emissive photodissociation in the presence of sunlight — an example of the utility of this type of reaction. Third, we have dissociative electron impact excitation (DEIE): when H₂O and CO₂ coming off the nucleus get illuminated, they can emit electrons (photoelectric effect), which in turn can excite molecules and lead to very different excited states and radiation than the previous reactions.

Throughout all this, Dr. Bodewits emphasised that observing each of these reactions/effects/processes tells us different information about the chemical composition of the comet, which is why he and his group study all of them together! The final reaction he highlighted is charge exchange, where an ion encountering an electron in an atom/molecule can emit radiation in certain special cases, and often the emission can be in the X-ray regime! Dr. Bodewits explained that X-rays are usually associated with very high temperature sources, while comets are fairly cold — yet this is a case of comets showing up in X-ray emission! Charge exchange often occurs because of charged particles from the solar wind hitting the comet.

In conclusion, Dr. Bodewits re-emphasised how comets are excellent labs that allow us to study planetary science, geophysics, plasma science, chemistry, and so much more!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Pratik Gandhi.

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Editor’s Note: This week we’re at the 240th AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA, and online. Along with a team of authors from Astrobites, we will be writing updates on selected events at the meeting and posting each day. Follow along here or at astrobites.com for daily summaries, or follow @astrobites on Twitter for live coverage. The usual posting schedule for AAS Nova will resume on June 21st.

Table of Contents:

• Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture: Phosphine in the Atmosphere of Venus, Jane Greaves (Cardiff University)
• Press Conference: Deciphering Dust, Analyzing Andromeda & Evolving/Ending Exoplanets
• Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal Lecturer: Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Oxford)
• Addressing the Impact of Satellite Constellations on Astronomy: The Pathway Forward
• Press Conference: Magnetic Fields & Galaxies
• Plenary Lecture: Héctor Arce (Yale University)
• Heineman Prize Talk: Robert Lupton (Princeton University) & David Weinberg Ohio State University
• Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy Activities in the Context of the Astro2020 Decadal
• After the 2020 World-Wide Protests: Progress and Failures of Implementing Substantial Change in Astronomy

Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture: Phosphine in the Atmosphere of Venus, Jane Greaves (by Briley Lewis)

AAS 240 started off today with a hot topic: possible detections of alien life. (More specifically, phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere!)

Venera’s view of the Venusian surface. [NASA/Russian Academy of Sciences/Venera 14]

In 2020, Professor Jane Greaves and collaborators released a paper that became headline news and claimed a detection of phosphine on Venus, which could be a possible sign of extraterrestrial life. Venus, though, has long been thought of as quite an inhospitable place. Early missions like Mariner 2 and Venera 14 revealed a dried-out surface with a sweltering temperature of 900°F, the result of a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Yet, some scientists think that microorganisms from a previously lush surface could have taken refuge in Venus’s thick clouds, where they may still reside today.

These microbes, if they existed, probably wouldn’t use oxygen since there’s little of it in the Venusian atmosphere, and we know that anaerobic (not using oxygen) microbes on Earth can produce phosphine (PH₃). Phosphine is also produced by industrial processes on Earth and even in the guts of penguins! But we don’t know of a way to make lots of phosphine just through photochemistry in an atmosphere. This means that if we were to observe phosphine on Venus, it could be taken as a likely sign of anaerobic life.

Greaves had the idea to investigate this in what she calls a “blue skies” project — something that was a bit of a long shot and would only take a few hours of observing time, but could be revolutionary if it worked. She used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea to observe Venus at millimeter wavelengths, peering into a “temperate” layer of clouds on Venus to search for spectral signatures of phosphine’s J=1-0 line. Much to her surprise, the spectra showed a detection! To be sure of what she was seeing, Greaves spent nearly three years looking at the data set and analyzing it before publishing her landmark research. Now, there are three epochs of data — two from JCMT and one from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — showing a detection of this phosphine spectral line.

Greaves’ three observations of the phosphine line on Venus from JCMT and ALMA. [Jane Greaves]

The article prompted significant discussion and debate, as any potential detection of life should. In her talk today, she explored the question of why there was so much debate and why this is such a hard detection to make. The answer is actually pretty simple: interferometry is hard! ALMA’s phase errors are symmetric, which leads to ripples in the spectra that need to be removed. For JCMT, signals that are delayed by bouncing off the parts of the radio antenna can be misinterpreted as different frequencies, again leading to ripples. These ripples are usually removed by fitting a polynomial and subtracting it away. Some have pushed back on this method, saying you could create a false signal with that method, but Greaves assured people today that this is a very standard practice in radio astronomy and, if done carefully and properly, cannot produce false signals as claimed. She has also recently reduced data from JCMT with an alternate method, removing the ripples in Fourier space, to reduce any bias in the reduction — and the signal is still present!

Greaves addressed a few other criticisms as well. First, some have suggested that the phosphine line is actually just a line of sulfur dioxide that’s been shifted over. According to her model fits to the data, it’s a low probability that could be the case. Plus, sulfur dioxide could only mimic phosphine if its abundance had increased by a factor of 10 within a week — something that’s never been seen in millimeter monitoring of Venus! Others have speculated that volcanoes could explain the presence of phosphine, but today Greaves made “a case against volcanism.” The idea is that phosphides from deep in the mantle could explosively erupt into the atmosphere and then react to create phosphine. After talks with geochemists, Greaves determined that’s an unlikely scenario. Plus, explosive eruptions need water — something Venus is notoriously lacking!

Despite this, Greaves isn’t wholly convinced it’s life, either. The clouds are acidic and lacking in water, making it hard even for something microscopic to live there. But the conditions in the clouds aren’t uniform, and they’re always changing — so maybe “microhabitats” of habitable conditions could exist!

Now, Greaves and her collaborators are following up, looking for ways to make this detection clearer and understand what exactly is going on in Venus’s clouds. Using data from JCMT, they’re looking for phosphine, semi-heavy water (HDO), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄) all at the same time to see how they vary together. They also want to see if these lines shift with Venus’s velocity, which would confirm they’re not just artifacts in the data. Plus, Greaves’ collaborators have used data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to search for phosphine lines, and found a hint that there’s something there! Further observations could be useful, and Greaves gave “a plea from me to keep this wonderful observatory [SOFIA] flying” despite its planned cancellation at the end of the summer.

Greaves’ AAS slide on SOFIA observations, showing the spectrum of a different PH3 line (4-3) and her plea to keep the observatory running. [Jane Greaves/NASA/Cordiner et al.]

The debate about life on Venus is nowhere near settled, but we can thank Jane Greaves for starting this incredible discussion. There’s much to look forward to, especially as new missions like DAVINCI+, VERITAS, EnVision, and more launch to our neighboring planet in the coming decade!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Briley Lewis.

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Press Conference: Deciphering Dust, Analyzing Andromeda & Evolving/Ending Exoplanets (by Pratik Gandhi)

The first press conference of AAS240 was also the first-ever attempt at a fully hybrid one! We had three in-person presenters (Dr. Angela Speck, Dr. Jeonghee Rho, and Dr. Ivanna Escala) and two joining remotely (graduate students Jacob Hamer and Ricardo Yarza).

Dr. Speck (University of Texas San Antonio) kicked us off with her talk “Spontaneous Reheating during Crystallization of Stardust: Resolution of an ISM Paradox”: “there is dust in space everywhere — it’s important for how stars form and die, and for molecule formation and dynamics. So understanding dust is really important!” The key question is whether dust is usually amorphous or crystalline, and using lab techniques, Dr. Speck’s group found that during crystallization by cooling, the material can often spontaneously heat up for a short period of time, which means that crystallizing dust can briefly glow really bright, while amorphous dust won’t glow as brightly. They also found that dust forming around stars will show crystalline structure, but cool dust in the interstellar medium is usually amorphous.

Second, Dr. Rho (SETI Institute), talked about the polarization and dust properties of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Since one of the theoretical pathways for dust formation is via supernovae, supernova remnants are great places in which to study dust. The polarization of light coming from the remnant can give us a wealth of information about the dust grain sizes, dust composition, and magnetic fields. Dr. Rho’s team discovered high polarization in the Cass A remnant, which could mean that the dust present is composed of large grains and mostly made of silicates, rather than carbon. Their work also indicates that supernovae are one of the main sources of dust in the early universe!

Next, Dr. Ivanna Escala (Carnegie Observatories) discussed the chemistry and dynamics of ‘tidal shells’ in the Andromeda galaxy. Tidal shells are thought to form by the destruction of low-mass satellite galaxies falling into a more massive host galaxy on highly radial orbits, resulting in stars getting stripped from the satellite due to tidal forces. Studying tidal shells can tell you about both the properties of the original satellite galaxies that merged in, as well as the dark matter in the massive host galaxy. Dr. Escala reported spectroscopic confirmation of a tidal shell system in Andromeda, which is also the first-ever observation of a multi-shell system! Andromeda is great for studying such features because it’s the closest Milky Way-like galaxy, allowing for exquisite observations. The simplest explanation for the multiple-shell system is that all of the shells have a common origin and resulted from a single merger, because they have very similar chemical compositions.

The first of the remote presenters, PhD student Jacob Hamer (Johns Hopkins University) talked about his use of data from the Gaia mission to study Hot Jupiter exoplanets. However, many exoplanets we observe are nothing like the ones in our solar system, because they are massive yet orbit really close to their stars; these are called Hot Jupiters! One of the key questions about their origin is: do Hot Jupiters form with their orbits misaligned with the star and then align over time? Using Gaia data, they found that aligned Hot Jupiters arrived at their current orbits early on, while mis-aligned ones arrive at their current orbits late, after the protoplanetary disk would have dissipated.

Finally, we had PhD student Ricardo Yarza (UC Santa Cruz), who works on the fluid dynamics of planetary engulfment, which is the process by which old stars engulf planets into their outer layers when they expand into giants. Yarza’s group uses simulations to study planetary engulfment, but this is difficult because giant stars and planets have very different radii, and the simulations cannot resolve such different scales simultaneously. Their group’s solution was to simulate just the zoomed-in region of the planet and its immediate surroundings within the stars as it gets engulfed; they found that engulfment could significantly boost the star’s brightness over short periods of time!

See live-tweets of this press conference here, by Pratik Gandhi.

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Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal Lecturer: Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Oxford) (by Katya Gozman)

This morning’s plenary session was probably one that many people have been waiting for, since the speaker was none other than Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, one of the most well-known women of astrophysics in the last century. Dr. Bell Burnell is the recipient of the Royal Astronomical Society’s (RAS) Gold Medal, which is the highest honor awarded by the society. A winner of multiple prestigious awards over her distinguished career, Bell Burnell is also a big advocate for budding astronomers and donated most of the prize money she received from the Special Breakthrough Prize to fund underrepresented minorities and refugees. While Dr. Bell Burnell is most well known for her groundbreaking discovery of radio pulsars in 1967, her talk was on the more human side of science — today she discussed women in astrophysics.

The main focus of her talk was her exploration of membership data for the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The IAU is the “king” of all astronomical societies, and many regional groups such as the American Astronomical Society fall under the umbrella of the IAU. The IAU is unique in that unlike other professional societies in STEM fields, such as math or physics, it offers memberships to both organizations such as AAS as well as individual memberships, making it a unique treasure trove of demographic data. This data set is also freely available online, and the IAU has published membership data segregated by gender since the late 1990s. Dr. Bell Burnell has taken this opportunity to print out the membership statistics over the last few years to examine the trends in women’s membership across different countries over time.

The statistics paint a picture of a slow rise in women’s membership over the last 15 years. In 2005, 12.8% of the IAU’s total members identified as female. In 2020, this rose to a slightly higher 18.3%. But Dr. Bell Burnell wondered what the statistics would look like if she split these numbers up by country — is there a trend to which countries have the highest or lowest percentage of women’s membership? Looking only at countries that had 100 or more total IAU members, the top three countries with the most female members in 2005 were Argentina, France, and Italy, with Argentina’s membership being 35% women! The IAU average for all countries was 13%, and countries like the US and UK fell below that average at 11% and 10%, respectively. Japan had the least number of women in the IAU — only 4%! In 2010, Argentina still held the #1 position at 37%, with Ukraine coming in 2nd and the US and UK still below average. Burnell noted that this trend continued on until 2020, with southern European and South American countries taking the lead while northern European and English-speaking countries fell consistently below average.

Two countries in particular caught Dr. Bell Burnell’s eye: the Netherlands and Russia. In 2005, the Netherlands was one of the countries with the lowest percentages of women in the IAU — 9%. But in 2020, that statistic rose to 19% — on par with the average world percentage that year. What did they do to drastically increase women’s representation? Dr. Bell Burnell found out that for a few years, the Dutch had certain positions such as professorships that were only open to female applicants, which boosted their IAU membership. Meanwhile Russia’s percentage has always stayed above average, from 18% in 2005 to 21% in 2020. Russia’s success story is attributed to a darker reason — the Soviet Union tragically had a lot of casualties during World War I along with a flu epidemic, and because the state provided nursing and childcare facilities, women in the USSR and Russia have taken on jobs historically reserved for men, leading to a more consistent number of women astronomers.

With all of these numbers swimming around our heads, Dr. Bell Burnell ended her talk by musing on why these participation disparities between countries might exist. She posited a list of possible cultural factors that might influence these statistics, such as men taking on jobs in other subjects that are seen as more prestigious than astronomy or other cultures having a stronger family network to raise children together. She also considered large wealth and class disparities that may make it more common for less wealthy women to work in childcare or housekeeping, leaving more well-off women with time for doing astronomy.

When asked what advice she would give to senior people in positions of power in hopes of increasing representation in astronomy, Dr. Bell Burnell urged them to look at their application and admissions data and look for biases in their hiring. In her words, “data speaks to scientists, so gather the data.” What about people at the opposite end — what should early career women that want success in astronomy do? To this question, Dr. Bell Burnell’s answer was short: “Hang in there!”

If you want to find more information on women who are currently trailblazing in astronomy, check out the Astrobites interview series for Women in Astronomy and other articles related to this topic!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Briley Lewis.

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Addressing the Impact of Satellite Constellations on Astronomy: The Pathway Forward (by Isabella Trierweiler)

At this splinter meeting, a panel of astronomers outlined current efforts for mitigating the effects of satellite constellations in telescope observations. The appeal of using constellations of many small satellites for communication has led to thousands of these satellites being deployed in orbit, with thousands more on their way. These small satellites already show up in astronomical images as long streaks, so the goal of the AAS Committee on Light Pollution, Radio Interference and Space Debris is to figure out how to minimize their impact on current and upcoming telescopes. In addition to visible trails in images, which are a big worry for upcoming survey telescopes such as the Vera Rubin Observatory, the transmissions from satellites may overflow into radio bands used by astronomers.  

To address all of these issues, the International Astronomical Union formed the Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference (CPS), a joint program with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory and the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab). The idea is that the Centre would bring together everyone who has a stake in keeping skies dark, and tackle the mitigation of satellite constellations simultaneously through multiple avenues. Their plans include developing a worldwide network to carefully track the satellites that are already in orbit, creating the software and hardware needed to remove satellite signals from data, and working with policy makers and satellite companies to make future constellations as astro-friendly as possible. 

See live-tweets of this session here, by Isabella Trierweiler.

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Press Conference: Magnetic Fields & Galaxies (by Katya Gozman)

One of the quintessential questions that gets thrown in after a discussion in astronomy is “What about magnetic fields?” This afternoon’s press conference speakers dared to address this question while also making us hungry for Italian food, letting the (magnetic) force be with us on Tatooine, and talking about (mind) bending jets in galaxies.

Our first speaker was Dan Clemens from Boston University, who introduced us to a region called Cygnus-X, a radio source in its namesake constellation. This region has a long history of star formation and one of the big questions that astronomers have asked is whether magnetic fields are a “friend or foe” for star formation — do they let dense gas condense further and start star formation, or do they hinder gas flow and quench it? Cygnus-X also has an interesting structure: with its massive star forming zones, it has multiple individual clouds we can see — but are these filaments of star formation tangled up like a bowl of spaghetti or arranged in flat, uniform layers like lasagna?

In order to answer this question, Dan looked at the structure of gas velocity using observations of ¹³CO gas and made maps color-coded by velocity. Then they identified zones that had only a single velocity component and used data from Gaia to determine distances to these single velocity clouds. Combining this with polarization and stellar color data, Dan was able to determine that Cygnus-X is a delicious lasagna — they found that these different star forming zones were well separated at different distances and likely did not collide to trigger star formation. These results forge the path for using Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus (HAWC+) data to look closer at the magnetic fields of these single velocity clouds and interpret polarization maps across the entire Cygnus-X field.

Our second speaker was Erin Cox from Northwestern University. While Dan told us about larger scale structures, Erin zoomed in to studying systems that are just beginning star formation — molecular clouds at the point of collapse with two stars orbiting each other that we call protobinary systems. If you’ve ever seen Star Wars, you might recognize the planet Tatooine, which orbits around a binary star system. When molecular clouds accumulate material, this creates a disk around the protostar system, as well as outflows that we can observe. Binaries come in two different flavors — close binaries (<500 au separation) and wide binaries.

But simulations throw us a curveball: they show us that some binaries can actually be born as wide binaries and then migrate inward to transform into a close binary. Since planets and stars form at the same time, understanding how binaries form and evolve сan also teach us about these “Tatooine” planets that orbit binaries. This is also an asset for learning about stars in general, since over half of stars are in binary pairs. Erin looked at the magnetic fields of a nearby star called L483 using three telescopes: Pico Dos Días, SOFIA, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). They found that its protostellar envelope actually hosts twisted magnetic fields, with a close binary whose stars orbit at the distance between the Sun and Neptune. They believe that L483 is an example of a star that formed as a wide binary whose stars have migrated inward and changed their dynamics, causing the system’s magnetic fields to twist around.

The last speaker, Melissa Morris of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at magnetic fields in a different light by studying the environments of radio galaxies that host bent jets. Lots of radio galaxies we also call active galactic nuclei (AGN) have very straight, collimated jets like Cygnus A, but many galaxies aren’t straight: their jets are bent like an antennae on the top of a fast-moving car. Melissa used a catalog of 175 bent and 187 straight jet galaxies and used a friends of friends algorithm with DECaLS data to find other members of the galaxy group or cluster they are part of in order to study the environments these two kinds of AGN are found.

They found that AGN with bent jets occur more often in larger and denser environments than straight jet galaxies. They also looked at the magnitude gap in these different galaxy groups and clusters — basically the difference in brightness between the brightest and second brightness galaxy. The reason this metric is useful is from the way galaxies evolve: in a galaxy cluster, two biggest galaxies will merge and consume other galaxies, getting brighter and brighter. So if the magnitude gap is small, that means the group is dynamically young — it didn’t have as much time to have many mergers and grow much brighter than other galaxies. Melissa found that AGN with bent jets are also more likely to occur in these dynamically young environments that didn’t have time to grow one enormously bright galaxy. From these findings she infers that it’s possible all the intracluster gas and dust that are dispersed within galaxy groups and clusters act as a medium to bend AGN jets as they move through space. Armed with this information, she can now use these bent jet AGNs as tracers of dense environments, measure that density, and study how galaxies in such environments evolve over time.

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Plenary Lecture: Héctor Arce (Yale University) (by Mike Foley)

Arecibo Observatory [University of Central Florida]

Proceeding the afternoon talks, we turned to a simultaneously heartbreaking and empowering topic: Arecibo Observatory. For nearly 70 years, Arecibo served as one of the foremost radio observatories in the world until it collapsed in December of 2020. Dr. Héctor Arce was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and he was inspired to pursue astronomy by both his grandfather and Arecibo. Now a professor of astronomy at Yale University, he charted out the history of this great observatory and prospects for rebuilding.

Arecibo Observatory was originally conceived in the late 1950s. Since then, it has remained a fixture in public perception of astronomy, immortalized in pop culture through scenes in movies like “Contact” and “GoldenEye”. Until 2020, Arecibo was making groundbreaking discoveries across all areas of astronomy, including the discoveries of the first binary pulsar, the first exoplanet and exoplanetary system, and the first fast radio burst. One of the major surveys conducted at Arecibo — the Galactic Arecibo L-Band Feed Array HI Survey (GALFA-HI) — was instrumental in mapping our interstellar medium and studying star formation in the Milky Way. 

Furthermore, the observatory was key for planetary science, making the first maps of the surface of Venus and discovering its retrograde rotation, suggesting ice poles on Mercury, and identifying near-earth asteroids. The number of near-earth asteroids discovered is projected to advance drastically beyond existing planetary radars in the next decade, so Arecibo and other radio observatories will be crucial to keeping tabs on these interstellar neighbors! 

The observatory went through two major upgrades, the most recent of which happened in the 1990s. However, the 2020 Decadal Survey identified Arecibo as a critical avenue for future radio science. At the time of collapse, a number of improvements were already planned and funded for the observatory. Indeed, the observatory grew to represent more than just astronomical research interests. “Arecibo is more than an icon in Puerto Rico, it is a part of our culture… A symbol of inspiration,” writes Dr. Ed Rivera-Valentín in Physics World. It is so beloved that, a year after the collapse, a US Senate resolution passed unanimously in support of Arecibo that encouraged the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies to study the ways that the observatory might be rebuilt. Next-generation ideas are already rolling in, from an improved dish design to the introduction of a robotic collimator that can drive around the primary dish. In these new designs, it will be important to keep alive the universal legacy of Arecibo — the observatory worked for all astronomical fields of research, and the rebuilt observatory should strive to do the same. Arce closes with a firm call to action: “Congress and federal agencies, let’s find the money to make this a reality!”

See live-tweets of this session here, by Mike Foley.

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Heineman Prize Talk: Robert Lupton (Princeton University) & David Weinberg Ohio State University (by Mike Foley)

While the next few decades will feature incredible advancements in survey astronomy, astronomers are still actively using data from many surveys that began back in the late 20th century. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) was one of the most significant of these surveys, and it is still going strong over 20 years later with SDSS-V! Robert Lupton and David Weinberg have been key players in SDSS, and they told us all about the significant successes of the survey and what may come next.

One of the main early goals of SDSS was conducting a redshift survey to chart the 3D structure of the universe. With the most recent data release from SDSS-V in 2020, astronomers were able to produce the largest 3D map of the universe to date, covering nearly 11 billion years of expansion history. They have also produced large databases of stellar spectra, mapped out baryon acoustic oscillations, and explored the internal structure of thousands of galaxies. 

With all of this success, it was surprising to hear that there was a lot of early skepticism surrounding SDSS. However, SDSS broke the redshift detection record in 1999, observing the farthest object ever discovered at the time. This convinced the astronomical community that SDSS could be a major player. The speakers noted that CCDs — charged coupled devices, which are essentially cameras for a telescope — were what set SDSS apart. The survey uses a telescope with 2.4-meter mirrors, 120 Megapixel cameras, and exposures that last for 54 seconds. Many new telescopes and upcoming surveys will beat that, so we can only imagine what the generation of survey astronomy will look like! 

In closing, Lupton and Weinberg offer advice for running a successful survey:

1. Design for big technical advantage on one or more axes.
2. Don’t fret too much about competition.
3. Think deeply about the data. Maximize quality and usefulness.
4. Value technical contributors!
5. Recruit and value good leadership.
6. Create coherent data sets that support a wide range of science.
7. Make data public.
8. Foster collaboration, diverse science, individual initiative, and creativity.
9. Build and sustain a multi-generational collaboration.
10. Have fun!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Mike Foley.

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Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy Activities in the Context of the Astro2020 Decadal (by Isabella Trierweiler)

The evening splinter meeting was hosted by the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) to present their strategic plan and its importance to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. Their plan has four main focus-points, including addressing harassment and bullying, creating inclusive and ethical workspaces, and interactions with AAS. Much of the work includes collaboration with other AAS committees, including demographics, employment, and minority identity committees. A full list of their plans can be found here. After introducing the committee, the session then broke out into small groups to brainstorm additional ideas. Check out their website for advice and a database of their previous departmental surveys!

See live-tweets of this session here, by Isabella Trierweiler.

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After the 2020 World-Wide Protests: Progress and Failures of Implementing Substantial Change in Astronomy (by Sabina Sagynbayeva)

The panel for this town hall was moderated by Howard University graduate student and #BlackInAstro founder Ashley Walker and Vanderbilt University graduate student KeShawn Ivory. The panel included Dr. Nicole Cabrera Salazar, Dr. Ron Gamble, Pratik Gandhi, Yoni Brande, and three “ghost” panelists who couldn’t be present but answered the questions: Dr. Mia de los Reyes, Dr. Gourav Khullar, and Huei Sears. 

First, Ashley Walker explained to the audience the context for the town halls like this: social unrest during Summer 2020 led to the #Strike4BlackLives and #BlackInAstro. After the protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, major institutions like the AAS and the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) created letters of support for #BlackInAstro. There were also some concrete institutional changes like removing Physics GRE requirements and sending out climate surveys to help students from marginalized groups. Other than that, however, Ashley acknowledges that almost nothing has changed.

Astrobites’ posts about these issues served as additional inspiration behind this panel. Therefore, the first part of the discussion was about these posts. Dr. Mia de los Reyes shared how she got the idea to write those posts: Kate Storey-Fisher pointed out to her that astro departments had made a lot of statements in support of Black scientists in 2020, but it hadn’t been clear what actions had actually been taken.

The next part of the discussion was about structural committees that a lot of institutions created after the 2020 protests. Dr. Gamble and Dr. Cabrera Salazar pointed out the main problem with these committees: not enough people who do actual work. The departments create different Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committees, but the members either have no expertise in the subject of matter or do not care about the issues. As a result, most of the work falls onto junior scientists’ shoulders, but junior scientists often don’t have the institutional power or emotional bandwidth to deal with the systemic problems. “It is like you need tragedy to have triumph,” says Dr. Gamble, emphasizing the fact that people tend to start caring about these issues in the wake of a tragedy. In order to make DEI committees function successfully, Dr. Cabrera Salazar says that we need to learn to ask Black people what they actually need. 

Another important issue that was discussed was the system that hires faculty or accepts applicants, and what needs to be done to make the system more inclusive and equitable. The whole problem is with people in power. People in positions of power in an academic department need to be mindful of the struggles Black students face prior to entering the department. However, once Black folks are accepted to the department, they should feel that they’re valued, like any other student, so they won’t leave the field due to toxic environments or a lack of support.

Though everyone pointed out that even in two years after the George Floyd protests not a lot has been done, Dr. Cabrera Salazar acknowledges that there’s still hope because “she has seen the willingness to do the emotional work to help them, but it is a collective work, not something done by individuals only.”

See live-tweets of this session here, by Sabina Sagynbayeva.

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AAS 240 is nearly here! The AAS Publishing team looks forward to reconnecting with meeting attendees in Pasadena and online, and we’re excited to share a preview of upcoming publishing-related sessions. Also, be sure to stop by the AAS booth in the Exhibit Hall, which will be staffed by several members of the publishing team, including Julie Steffen (AAS Chief Publishing Officer), Janice Sexton (AAS Editorial Operations Manager), and Frank Timmes (AAS Lead Editor of the High-Energy Phenomena and Fundamental Physics corridor). AAS Nova Editors Kerry Hensley and Susanna Kohler, AAS Media Fellow Haley Wahl, Astrobites Media Intern Briley Lewis, and the rest of the Astrobites team will also be available at the Astrobites booth in the Exhibit Hall.

Making the Most of AAS WorldWide Telescope

Sunday, June 12, 11:00 am PT – 12:30 pm PT | Convention Center Conference Room 204 and online

AAS WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a tool for showcasing astronomical data and knowledge. The new “2022 edition” of the free and open-source WWT visualization software can power a wide range of initiatives like interactive “live” images in journal articles, exploratory data visualizations in Jupyter notebooks, immersive custom websites, and professional-grade planetariums. This interactive tutorial will introduce attendees to the WWT software ecosystem in the context of its applications to research, education, and public outreach. Participants should bring a laptop with battery charger and a modern web browser installed.

Make Your Research More Discoverable with a Community Supported Vocabulary: Applications of the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus

Monday, June 13, 11:00 – 11:30 am PT, Exhibit Hall Theater A/B (in person only)

An example of the interconnected concepts captured by the UAT. Click to enlarge. [Unified Astronomy Thesaurus/AAS]

Sky & Telescope Astronomy 101 Ambassadors

Monday, June 13, 1:30 – 2:00 pm PT, Exhibit Hall Theater A/B (in person only)

Join Peter Tyson, editor in chief of Sky & Telescope, and Tom Rice, the AAS education and mentoring specialist, to learn more about the AAS Sky & Telescope initiative to support Astro 101 courses and the Sky & Telescope Ambassadors program. During this presentation, you will learn about free resources to use in your classroom this year and more about a community of sharing resources related to teaching Astro 101.

Introducing WWT 2022: The Next Generation of AAS WorldWide Telescope

Monday, June 13, 5:30 – 6:00 pm PT, Exhibit Hall Theater A/B (in person only)

Screenshot of the WWT web interface displaying the New Horizons Pluto data. [WWT]

AAS Journals Peer Review Process with AAS Editor Brian Jackson

Tuesday, June 14, 5:30 – 6:00 pm PT, Exhibit Hall Theater A/B (in person only)

You’ve toiled for months over your LaTeX editor, cajoled your co-authors for figures, begged your advisor to give you feedback, and finally, you’re ready to submit your masterpiece to ApJ. You upload all your source files to the eJournal Press website and click the submit button.

What happens next? In this presentation, AAS science editor Brian Jackson will discuss the peer review process for the AAS Journals (ApJ, ApJS, ApJL, AJ, PSJ, and RNAAS) and answer your questions: How are referees chosen to review articles? If I’m chosen to review, what kind of feedback is the most useful? If I’m supposed to receive my referee report in three weeks, why did it take six weeks? What is “double-anonymous review,” and how does it work?

Supercharging Your Science with Software: The Asclepias Project

Wednesday, June 15, 2:00 – 3:00 pm PT | Convention Center Conference Room 204 and online

Screen capture of the Asclepias user interface. Click to enlarge. [The Asclepias Project/AAS]

The Asclepias project was born out of scientists’ need to distribute, discover, and track software as it is used in science. This tool allows you to connect the software tools and the scientific results, making your progress faster, more open, and reproducible.

In this session, we will have a demonstration of the Asclepias tools to track software and articles that use it, a panel discussion of how to supercharge your own science by finding the software tools to help you or distributing the code that you’ve written to increase its impact, and we’ll open the floor to the community to discuss the future of these efforts.