This week, AAS Nova and Astrobites are attending the American Astronomical Society (AAS) summer meeting in Pasadena, CA.

AAS Nova Editors Kerry Hensley and Susanna Kohler and AAS Media Fellow Lexi Gault will join Astrobites Media Intern Niloofar Sharei and Astrobiter Lucas Brown to live-blog the meeting for all those who aren’t attending or can’t make it to all the sessions they’d like. We plan to cover all of the plenaries and press conferences, so follow along here on aasnova.org or on astrobites.org! You can also follow Astrobites on Bluesky at astrobites.bsky.social for more meeting content.

Where can you find us during the meeting? We’ll be at the Astrobites booth in the Exhibit Hall all week — stop by and say hello! You can also find Susanna, Kerry, and Lexi at the press conferences in Ballroom H Monday and Tuesday at 10:15 am and 2:15 pm PDT and Wednesday at 10:15 am PDT. AAS press conferences are open to all attendees, and they can also be found on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel for anyone not attending the meeting.

In addition to the usual press conferences, the AAS Press team has collaborated with Los Angeles’s own Griffith Observatory to arrange a special live recording of the Observatory’s acclaimed astronomy program, All Space Considered. This event is open to all AAS 248 attendees and will take place Wednesday, 17 June, at 2:15 pm PDT in Ballroom H. We hope to see you there!

Finally, you can read the currently published AAS 248 keynote speaker interviews, which were conducted by Astrobiters Niloofar Sharei, Amaya Sinha, Sowkhya Shanbhog, Katya Gozman, and Natalie Price. Be sure to check back all week as the remainder are released!

Education, Outreach, and More at AAS 248

AAS 248 features a broad range of sessions related to education and outreach. For a comprehensive and curated list of sessions, check out this post from AAS Director of Education Programs Tom Rice. Here are a few highlights (all times PDT; must be logged in to aas.org for links to work correctly); note that times and locations are subject to change:

On Monday, kick off the meeting with the Astronomy Education, Outreach, and Night-Sky Stewardship iPoster session, 9:00–10:00 am in Exhibit Hall A. Wrap up your day by attending the Reception for Astronomy Educators from 6:30 to 8:00 pm in Room 107.

Tuesday morning, hear about pressing issues relating to climate change at the Special Session What Astronomers Can Do About Climate Change: Infrastructure, Education, and Communication, from 10:00 to 11:30 am in Ballroom G. That afternoon from 2:00 to 3:30 pm, tune in to the Pathways into Modern Space Science oral session in Ballroom C.

On Wednesday, learn how to Make Your Voice Heard as an Advocate for Science in a Special Session co-sponsored by the AAS and the American Institute of Physics from 10:00 to 11:30 am in Ballroom G. Throughout the week, check in with the League of Women Voters in the Exhibit Hall — they’ll be conducting a voter registration drive during the meeting.

Thursday, the final day of the meeting, closes with a look at a local institution in the 40 Years of Community Engagement at IPAC: Lessons Learned Special Session from 2:00 to 3:30 pm in Ballroom F.

If you’re sticking around Pasadena after the meeting, consider heading to Griffith Observatory for their open house on Saturday, 20 June, 2:00–10:00 pm, which will showcase accessible observing techniques like tactile images, 3D models, live camera feeds, and sonification.

And remember, you can find a longer curated list of education-related sessions here!

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The 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, to be held in Pasadena, CA, 14–18 June, is nearly here. The AAS Publishing team looks forward to connecting with meeting attendees, and you can find representatives from the publishing and journals’ editorial staff at the AAS booth in the Exhibit Hall in the Pasadena Convention Center. AAS Director of Scholarly Publishing Kerry Kroffe will be available at the AAS Publishing booth, so be sure to stop by to say hello, chat about the journals, and pick up some swag!

AAS Nova Editors Kerry Hensley and Susanna Kohler, AAS Media Fellow Lexi Gault, Astrobites Media Intern Niloofar Sharei, and the rest of the Astrobites team will also be available periodically at the Astrobites booth in the Exhibit Hall. We look forward to seeing you there!

AAS Peer Review Workshop

This workshop led by the scientific editors of the AAS journals will teach participants about the peer review process, give them the opportunity to see both poor and exemplary referee reports, and provide them with hands-on experience in writing a peer review report. Participants will receive a graduation certificate. While signups for the AAS 248 peer review workshop are closed, more workshops are planned for future AAS meetings, so keep an eye out for more information about upcoming opportunities!

Open Science, Data, and AI in Astronomy: Sessions to Look for at AAS 248

Note: The links in this section take you to the corresponding entries in the AAS 248 block schedule. You must be logged in for the links to work correctly; otherwise, they will take you to the main block schedule page. Note that times and locations are subject to change.

The upcoming AAS meeting has a number of sessions, workshops, and lectures for those interested in open-source tools, data management strategies, and AI’s role in astronomy. Sunday, 14 June, will feature a trio of data-related workshops. (Note that these workshops require an additional fee and can be added to your registration.) The “Euclid Data in the Cloud: Access, Analysis, and Science Opportunities” workshop (10:00 am – 11:30 pm PDT in Room 101) will introduce participants to accessing and analyzing data from Euclid, a European Space Agency mission with NASA participation. The overlapping workshop “High Energy Science Analysis with HEASARC Services” (10:00 am – 12:00 pm PDT in Room 102), organized by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), is targeted toward early-career scientists and anyone curious about HEASARC services. The workshop will begin with an overview of available services before transitioning into hands-on experimentation with these tools. Finally, “An Introduction to Fornax: Scalable Data and Compute for Scientific Analysis” (2:00–4:00 pm PDT in Room 101) will introduce attendees to NASA’s new Astrophysics Science Platform through live demonstrations and guided exercises.

Of particular interest regarding AI in astronomy is Monday morning’s plenary lecture from Sanmi (Oluwasanmi) Koyejo titled “The Measurement Gap: What AI Can Get Wrong and Why Astronomers Are the Fix.” This session will take place from 11:40 am to 12:30 pm PDT in Ballroom DE.

The “AI-Driven Science in the Survey Era” Special Session will take place on Tuesday, 16 June, from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm in Ballroom F. This session will highlight recent breakthroughs in a broad range of astronomical sub-fields that have greatly benefited from the use of AI and machine-learning techniques. Also on Tuesday, check out recent work on imaging and data-handling methods at the “Observational Imaging Methods and Data Pipelines” iPoster session from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm in the Exhibit Hall.

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