Announcement from the AAS
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) will convene an online press conference on Tuesday, 1 December, featuring exciting new results on exoplanets from Extreme Solar Systems III, a conference taking place from 29 November through 4 December 2015 at the Waikoloa Beach Marriott Resort & Spa on Hawaii Island.
ExSS III is the third in a series of conferences that began with Extreme Solar Systems in 2007 in Santorini, Greece, and was followed by Extreme Solar Systems II in 2011 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Next week’s conference, like the previous two, will cover all aspects of research on exoplanets. Some 350 researchers from all over the world are registered for the meeting.
ExSS III isn’t set up for the types of press conferences held during regular AAS meetings, but because there are so many potentially newsworthy presentations, the organizers and the AAS Press Office have come up with a plan for an online briefing to be held beginning at 7 am HAST on Tuesday, 1 December. That’s 9 am PST on the US West Coast, 12 pm EST on the East Coast, 17:00 UTC/GMT, and 6:00 pm CET in Central Europe. The briefing will last no more than one hour and will be conducted as a Google+ Hangout On Air; viewers without Google+ accounts may participate via YouTube.
Presenters and onsite reporters will gather in the Paniolo room at the Marriott — though, strictly speaking, this isn’t necessary, as all participants will be using their own computers to connect to the briefing. Here’s the lineup:
Rick Fienberg (American Astronomical Society)
Host & Moderator
Paul Kalas (Univ. of California, Berkeley) & Abhijith Rajan (Arizona State Univ.)
Resolving the HD 106906 Disk with the Gemini Planet Imager
Thayne Currie (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)
Extreme Exoplanet Direct Imaging: New Results and the Path to Imaging Another Earth
Jason Steffen (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Dynamical Considerations for Life in Multihabitable Planetary Systems
Lisa Kaltenegger (Cornell University)
Independent Commentary
The briefing will last no more than one hour and will be conducted as a Google+ Hangout On Air, with journalists and the public invited to participate via the associated YouTube or Google+ pages:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXfbVxbqWKU
Google+: https://plus.google.com/events/cq682ju6jeetqmsosst1t0vk3eg
Those watching on YouTube should be able to ask questions via text chat, while those on Google+ should be able to ask questions via the built-in Q&A app. In case either or both of those features don’t work, as a backup journalists may send questions by email to press@aas.org.
Links to the briefing will be provided in a subsequent advisory, on Monday, 30 November.
Contact:
Rick Fienberg
AAS Press Officer
+1 202-328-2010 x116
rick.fienberg@aas.org
Source: blog
