As Pamela mentioned earlier, I get to spend today at the Johnson Space Centre Museum. It’s not as good as seeing the shuttle launch with Scott, but it’s a really close second – I’m sure not complaining. Talk about chances to geek out.
Pamela dropped me off here just before they opened at 10am. After paying [...]

Clearly, I should attend all the sessions in the amphitheatre regardless of their topic. It has better chairs, better audio/mic control, a better (tiered) layout and tables – which make my computer so much easier to use than when it’s sitting on my lap.
So I attended this session, and as with all the sessions I [...]

I sat in on a large portion of this session about topographical features on Mars, and I have now moved outside to write my thoughts on it at a table by the pool. It’s a little odd to this Canadian to be able to comfortably sit outside in the Sun on only the 10th of [...]

Looking around the session I’m currently sitting in (Mars: Pingos, POlygons and other Puzzles), there’s one big thing I’m noticing. This conference has a much larger student to grey-hair ratio. In fact, I see very few true grey-hairs. There are certainly professionals and teachers of all ages… but not so many (relatively speaking) of the [...]

As with Pamela, I am able to attend LPSC because it occurs during spring break. It’s not the way most of my classmates will spend their break, as I will neither be dozing in the Sun on a beach nor partying hard. This will be way better - a whole week to geek out about [...]

My last interview at AAS was with Dr. Stephen Unwin, the deputy project scientist for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). He took the time to tell me a little bit about the mission, and how the telescope will work.

While at AAS, I got a chance to talk with JPL scientist Wes Traub, who works with the Exoplanet Exploration group. He showed me a bunch of different proposed missions that would help us find exoplanets.

I learned a lot about some proposed missions. More recently, in editing the video, I’ve learned a lot about [...]

Continuing with the video series, I interviewed Peter Edmonds, a press scientist with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
He showed pictures of several objects:

Cornet Star Cluster
The Sombrero Galaxy
Abell 520
Supernova Remnant G292
NGC 4258
Eta Carina
The Eagle Nebula
Centaurus A

Yesterday was pretty busy for me - I edited a bunch of interviews and conducted a few more. One thing I did manage to do was stick my head in the two town hall meetings occuring at lunchtime.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) had its town hall meeting at the same time as the National [...]

Yesterday afternoon I also got a chance to speak with Dr. Luisa Rebull, one of the scientists working with the Spitzer Space Telescope. She told me a little bit about Spitzer, and about the proposed Spitzer warm mission - the reason they are here at AAS.