#Agenda

#AAS245 4-6 January 2026, Phoenix / Arizona
By @aas.org

#AAS245 Meeting Photos Online

If you attended the meeting — or even if you missed it — you'll enjoy perusing the hundreds of images shot by our photographers Todd Buchanan & Phil McCarten from Corporate Event Images. aas.org/posts/news/2...

📷 © 2025 Corporate Event Images

#AAS245 was a success! IPACers gave talks, lead workshops, presented posters, and even took part in a press conference! From SPHEREx to PRIMA, to Roman to Euclid, IPAC partners with so many exciting astronomy missions. Congrats to everyone for their hard work 🎉

Proof i gave a talk at #AAS245 😜

Elemental Remote Observatory » Dale Ghent The Elemental Remote Observatory was commissioned on November 28, 2024 at Howling Coyote Remote Observatories, near Pie Town, New Mexico. It is the culmination of a goal set in 2015 to design and proc...

Made a small page for my remote telescope. Nothing fancy, just some facts about it. Will add more stuff over time, such as a repo of astropy-based image calibration & reduction tools I've been working on (ty to @brettmorr.is for the #astropy ws @ #aas245 ).❤️ #astronomy daleghent.com/observatory

#AAS245 We've got the most creative community in the universe & we look forward to seeing our members' content at AAS meetings. We appreciate the love when you ask to collaborate & tag us in your posts, videos, stories, etc. Here's member Robert Washington dressed as some of his fav stellar objects💫

#AAS245 was one for the books! ✈️📡🎡 We are so thankful to have spent last week with 3,737 other #astronomy fans - what we hear was the largest @aasoffice.bsky.social
gathering so far! #radioastronomy #conference #nationalharbor

100 years ago, Edwin Hubble proved our Milky Way galaxy isn't alone 100 years ago, Hubble revealed a universe of galaxies that existed beyond ours — but he couldn't have done it without a little help.

@space.com carried coverage of a presentation by Jeff Rich at last week’s #AAS245 conference - about one of the Observatory’s most remarkable stories, Hubble’s discovery of galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
www.space.com/the-universe/100-years-ago-edwin-hubble-proved-our-milky-way-galaxy-isnt-alone

During the #AAS245 #JWST Town Hall attendees received an overview of science, updates, status reports on JWST science ops, info about timelines for Cycles 4 &d 5. STScI also organized a JWST Pipeline Workshop. Updates: stsci.edu/contents/eve... #astronomy #astrobiology

#AAS245 Thank you to everyone who joined us for the 245th AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD. It was a GREAT week of science & we couldn't have done it without you. See you in Anchorage for #AAS246 (call for proposals opens soon!). #ExploreAstronomy ✨

A student presenting in the Chambliss student poster competition at the 245th AAS meeting in January 2025. Photo by © CorporateEventImages/Phil McCarten 2025

#AAS245 The AAS is pleased to announce the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award winners from the 245th AAS meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, in January 2025. Congratulations, all! aas.org/posts/news/2...

Promotional image for the 245th American Astronomical Society meeting at National Harbor, Maryland on 12 to 16 January 2025

Presentations from #AAS245 are now available. Review the NASA and STScI presentations from the #JWST Town Hall and JWST Pipeline Workshop: bit.ly/4hlHflz

A grey tray is overflowing with astronomy related stickers and a few paper items. The most prominent stickers are "I ❤️ Pluto", Nancy Grace Roman telescope, and Startorialist

I don't think I got enough stickers at #aas245

Emma Lieb, a young white woman with long brown hair, speaks into a microphone. She is wearing a black suit and gesticulating with her hands. The blue background shows the American Astronomical Society name and logo.

Press conference title slide, screen shot from a Zoom session. It reads "AAS 245, 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, National Harbor, Maryland, 12-16 January 2025. Monday, 13 January, 2025, 2:15pm EST (19:15 UTC). Press conference. Supernovae and Massive Stars." The background is a space telescope image of a dark sky with blue stars and a red and orange wispy nebula, credited as "Cometary globule CG4 (CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; Image processing T. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. deMartin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab), CC BY 4.0)".

This is excellent and exciting work by @uofdenver.bsky.social graduate student @emmalieb.bsky.social, who presented it at the recent #AAS245 meeting. Here are links to her press conference (she's the 3rd speaker) and poster.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MBn...

tinyurl.com/lieb25-poster

We were very pleased to meet the author, Kevin B. Burdge, in-person at the CDS booth at #AAS245 in National Harbour.

My eyes are closed here, but what's important is that Hubble and JWST's are wide open 👀 & you can actually scan the QR code in the photo 🔭🧪
Amazing PHANGS showing @ #AAS245 with >30 talks+posters✨ A privilege to be working with such a fantastic group of scientists & human beings #extragalactic

Startorialist was there at the #AAS245. Student got her new astronomy dress.

And that's it for #AAS245.

I will now go back to a more sane posting volume.

Astropy's Origin Story (more at astropy.org/history) Q. How do I use python to convert from Equatorial J2000 RA/Dec to Ecliptic coordinates (as of 2011)? A. Use any of: PyAst, PyEphem, Astrolib, PyAstro, Kapteyn, Astropysics, Probably more... A person looking at their laptop, frustrated.

Everyone agreed this duplication and incompatibility was bad. "Do we as a community really need yet another separate python library for astronomy and yet another attempt at building a core set of routines ported from the IDL library?" Marshall Perrin on "astropy" mailing list, June 2011

Everyone agreed this duplication and incompatibility was bad. Agreement is crucial to shared development. A grassroots discussion started in June 2011, followed by a series of votes (~100 astronomers), some initial dev work (by astronomers and engineers), and a workshop. The Result: the Astropy Project

And the final talk of #AAS245 was the Berkeley Prize Lecture by Erik Tollerud, Clara Brasseur, and Kelle Cruz on Astropy.

In 2011, Tollerud was a grad student who wanted to write a unified library of astronomy packages. This started a discussion that eventually became the Astropy project.

A bit about this talk and me About talk: Want to give you a sense of the trajectory of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and results, from one experimentalist's (mine) perspective. So, biased towards my past, present and future. About me: Started by helping to build and using Hat Creek mm-wave interferometer to study star formation. Then to Caltech using the OVRO interferometer and linking CSO and JCMT telescopes as a submm interferometer to measure protostellar disks, but I was a closet cosmologist... Was intrigued with exploiting the stability of interferometry to study the CMB.

Next up the Heineman Prize Lecture at #AAS245 by John Carlstrom: Past, Present, and Future Cosmic Microwave Background Surveys.

I took an intro astronomy course from Carlstrom as an undergrad, so it was cool to see him up on the stage!

STARFORGE • STAR FORmation in Gaseous Environments • Gizmo, Meshless-Finite-Mass code • Magnetic fields (ideal and non-ideal) • 5-energy bin radiation transfer ("M1") • Dust and gas heating and cooling processes • Star particles with stellar evolution model Stellar feedback: • radiation (heating, pressure, ionization) • stellar winds • protostellar outflows • supernovae • Cosmic-ray transport (single and multi-bin) See Grudic et al. 2021 for methods Senior Personnel Mike Grudic, Pl, Phil Hopkins, Me, Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere, Anna Rosen Grad Students/Postdocs Shivan Khuller, Nina Filippova, Margot Fitz Axen, Juan Farias, Aleksey Generozov Current or former members of my group @ UT Austin, Nadine Soliman, Piuysh Sharda, Duo Xu, David Guszejnov, PI Now at Ab Initio

And wrapping up my #AAS245 posts - Day 4

We started off the morning with Stella Offner's plenary Lecture: The Star Formation Engine.

Offner is part of the STARFORGE collaboration, which simulates the star formation process.

Found a photo of me from the American Astronomical Society's gallery this week at #aas245.

Even from the back, there's no doubt that's me.

JWST is not even close to hitting peak science or demand • JWST is performing better than expected, with data pipelines and calibration significantly improved, and >20 yr lifetime. • ~1200 JWST papers published so far, >750 in 2024 • JWST scientific discovery cycle is accelerating, with new questions driven by Webb's initial discoveries and the impending deluge of Roman/Euclid/Rubin data. • JWST demand is likely to continue to increase for several more cycles, given experience with Hubble and ALMA. • JWST has a world-wide impact on public imagination, and is a clear demonstration of US and NASA's leadership. • → We must continue strong support for JWST community via grants, user support, tools, and pipelines for the foreseeable future. Bar chart showing number of JWST proposals by cycle. Cycle 1 has just over 1000, cycle 2 has over 1500, cycle 3 has almost 2000, and cycle 4 has over 2500.

JWST is FANTASTIC It out-performs its pre-launch requirements Images twice as sharp (diffraction limited at 1 micron instead of 2 microns) Optics more stable (over 6 months with no mirror corrections in 2024) → Most instruments modes are more sensitive Fuel for >20 years It is now on its third year of mission It is fulfilling its promise of revolutionizing astronomy

How is JWST Revolutionizing Astronomy? By allowing previously impossible measurements. Line graph showing a spectrum, a plot of flux (Jy) vs. wavelength (microns). Spectra form JWST and Spitzer are shown. The JWST and Spitzer spectra show the same overall shape, but zoom-ins show detailed spectral lines that are not seen in Spitzer's lower resolution spectra. The larger spectral features include: H2O, Amorphous silicate, Forsterite, and Enstatite. Zoom ins show smaller lines of H2S(5), H2O, H2S(1), and CO2. Perotti et al. 2023, water in the terrestrial planet-forming zone of the PDS 70 disk.

Wrapping up day 3 of #AAS245 with the JWST town hall (yes, I know that it was Wednesday. In my defense, there was a lot going on).

JWST is awesome, working better than expected, scientifically productive, and has more than 20 years worth of propellant.

Some fun times at #aas245 1) transients dinner organized by the soon Prof. Sebastian Gomez with 2) Young Supernova Experiment friends including alum Lindsay DeMarchi and the 3) the STScI supernova "mafia" and 4) discovering that my DECam program is part of US ELT program's ToO dashboard mock-up

Okay who else still has “The Rainbow Connection” randomly playing in their head? #AAS245

First Conference of Astronomers & Astrophysicists October 1897, Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin The meeting annually held by the Board of Editors for the discussion of current investigations was merged in the general sessions of the conferences. The first paper presented was by Sir William and Lady Huggins, and dealt with some of the results obtained in their recent photographic studies of stellar spectra. At the conclusion of the discussion of this paper the meeting adjourned.

Next up at #AAS245 was the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize Lecture: The Evolution, Influence, and Ultimate Fate of Massive Stars by Maria Drout.

The study of massive stars has a long history. AAS is celebrating 125 years. Looking back at the first talk of the first meeting, it was on the spectra of stars.

NASA'S WISE satellite has provided a revolutionary new view of the infrared Universe. Illustration of WISE orbiting the Earth. WISE launched in late 2009, ceased science observing after 2024 July, and re-entered Earth's atmosphere in 2024 November.

Next plenary at #AAS245, Revealing the Solar Neighborhood's Diversity and the Milky Way's Substellar Halo by Aaron Meisner

The WISE satellite made 20 all sky mappings in the infrared from 2009-2024.

Catching up on more from #AAS245 day 3

Giada Arney's plenary lecture: Are We Alone? The Search for Life on Habitable Worlds

Scott Engle - Detailing the Evolution of Red Dwarfs, and the Consequences for their Hosted Exoplanets, in Support of the Rocky Worlds DDT Program

M stars have a magnetic clock, slowing rotation due to stellar winds. Need stars with known ages to calibrate this. #AAS245

EUV photons dominate heating inputs to Earth-like exoplanets (nitrogen and oxygen dominated) Comparing EUV and X-ray Influences •Photo-absorption cross-sections are higher in EUV than X-ray •EUV photons are absorbed in the highest (lowest density) layers of the atmosphere where radiative losses are minor and the heating efficiency is highest •There are more EUV photons for all stars (noting X-ray luminosity is higher for the most active stars) Solomon & Qian (2005) Van Looveren et al. (2024) Plot showing Altitude (km) vs. Wavelength (nm). Altitude values range from 100 to 500 km. Wavelength values range from 0 to 100 nm. Above just over 100 km, heating dominates. Below that, heating and cooling are balanced.

Empirical EUV History of Solar-type stars vs M dwarfs Series of plots showing Flux density at 1 AU (erg s^ -1 cm ^- 2) vs Age (Gyr). The flux values range from 0.1 to 100. The age vales range from 0.1 to 10 gigayears. In the 100-360 Angstrom range there are three points for solar-type stars which slope downwards. There are also four points for M dwarfs which are flat, all above 100 erg s^ -1 cm ^- 2.

UV and X-ray Observations of Rocky Planet M Dwarf Host Stars: Inputs for Atmospheric Photochemistry and Escape Calculations Summary: 1) High-energy stellar spectra: a) FUV & NUV inputs (large archive with HST and GALEX) drive photochemistry, haze formation, biomarkers (and their interpretation) b) EUV (and X-ray) inputs drive atmospheric heating and evolution of (exo) planetary atmospheres 2) UV and X-ray flares are frequent, even on "inactive" M dwarfs; a) Flares may push terrestrial planets into hydrodynamic escape regime 3) Lack of empirical constraints on EUV and its short- & long-term variation is one of the largest uncertainties in interpreting (and predicting, e.g., for HWO) atmospheric retention

Kevin France - UV and X-ray Observations of Rocky Planet M Dwarf Host Stars: Inputs for Atmospheric Photochemistry and Escape Calculations

The cosmic shoreline is the cumulative effects of Extreme UV light over time. The cosmic shoreline is calibrated on the Sun. M stars are different. #AAS245