AAS in Boston – wicked smaat
Posted: May 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 Comments »So this is my first experience of the American Astronomical Society meetings. It’s being held in a rather posh area of Boston which feels like a merging of Piccadilly and the New Town but with suicidal pedestrians. The atmosphere of being in a large hotel in a city centre is somewhat different to the UK NAM (on a university campus) or the Dutch NAC (locked in a monastery in the rural Limburg* for three days).
So far we’ve had a very energetic talk on future Decadal Surveys by Malcolm Longair (do I even need to state that he was energetic and wonderfully enthusiastic, he always is). Also a very nice talk from Jeremy Drake of CfA about the weather on low mass stars. That had a lot of interesting detail on how X-rays can evaporate oceans and inhibit planet formation as well as touching on the controversial area of cosmic rays and climate. In the afternoon I was in the Pan-STARRS1 session, it was great to see what all fantastic work from all the key projects are doing as I only really see what the KP I work on does plus what I hear on the grapevine. There is a nice twitter stream describing the session here. I also popped in to the stars general session to see a nice but unfortunately too short talk on brown dwarf variability.
Waiting to speak on Wednesday and trying not to blow too much money on clothes you can’t get in Hawai`i and Irn Bru and Lucazade from Irish grocery shops.
*Limburg, where men are men and language is tonal.
Whereabouts in Boston are you. At the ADASS meeting, we were at the Seaport Hotel beside the World Trade Centre. While it was very nice, the restaurants nearby were very expensive.
Nick we are in the Westlin in the Copley area. Pretty posh but there are cheap decent fast food places if you look for them.