AAS 2009: Long Beach
Welome to Long Beach, California for the 2009 conference of the American Astronomical Society. This means, at least for me, palm trees in January. They've also shipped in a container-load of astronomers, here in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, the site of one of the largest ports in the world. There are 2,450 registrants so far, according to AAS staff. It's a beautiful day out there, but most of us are in the basement of the conference center listenting to AAS president John Huchra greet us.
It's five days after the new year, and thus five days into the International Year of Astronomy, or IYA for short. I have yet to hear this acronym pronounced out loud, but I hope that it is said 'eee-yah', like a cross between 'hell yeah!' and 'enya'. That accurately describes my feelings about astronomy – it takes the excitment of discovering new worlds and sets it to a backdrop of ethereal lounge music.
But John Huchra just pronounced it 'eye why ay' – and this makes sense too, because the reason for the IYA is that it is the 400th birthday of Galileo's telescope: the first eye on the sky, and the instrument that led to many 'why' questions. Looking forward to hearing new why questions this week.
