Issue 15-42, October 1, 2015
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- UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR THE 47th DPS MEETING IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MD
- DPS WOMEN IN PLANETARY SCIENCE DISCUSSION HOUR
- THE FIRST DPS OPEN MIC NIGHT
- NASA ASTROPHYSICS ASSETS WORKSHOP AT DPS
- NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TOURS AT DPS
- SBAG MEETING 14: EARLY CAREER TRAVEL SUPPORT
- LPSC SPECIAL SESSION DEADLINE
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UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR THE 47th DPS MEETING IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MD
National Harbor, MD, 8-13 November 2015 at the Gaylord National Harbor
DPS members you are invited to attend the 47th Annual DPS meeting!
* Important dates
8 October 2015 DPS 47 Regular Registration Deadline
http://aas.org/meetings/dps47/registration
And also:
– 1 October: Women in Planetary Science Discussion Hour Boxed Lunch Order Deadline
– 8 October: 47th DPS Hotel Reservations Deadline
-21 October: DPS Open Mic Night Submission
The DPS is grateful to our Meeting Sponsors:
Lockheed Martin
Universities Space Research Association (USRA)
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Orbital ATK
Elsevier
University of Arizona Press
Southwest Research Institute
Space Telescope Science Institute
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
Space Science Institute
AURA
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DPS WOMEN IN PLANETARY SCIENCE DISCUSSION HOUR
Join us on Tuesday, Nov. 10th from 12:00-1:30 pm for the annual DPS Women in Planetary Science
event. Amy Simon will give a keynote address titled “Navigating Hurdles Throughout Your Career”
and discussion will be formulated around the various topics that arise.
Please feel free to bring any information/announcements related to women in astronomy and planetary
science to share. Due to the generosity of the DPS committee and a donation from the Space Science
Institute, we will be able to provide boxed lunches this year. All are welcome!
Pre-registration at http://bit.ly/DPS_WIPS_2015 is required due to space limitations. Lunch orders must
be placed by Oct. 1st. The event will take place in the “Baltimore 3” room.
Contact [email protected] with questions.
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THE FIRST DPS OPEN MIC NIGHT
The DPS Open Mic Night allows our members to share their musical and other talents with their
friends and colleagues. Premiering Wednesday, 11 November from 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm, we invite all
musicians, singers, story tellers, comedians, poets, spoken word enthusiasts or other performers
(e.g. jugglers) to participate. Come have some fun and strut your stuff!
Sign up at http://aas.org/meetings/dps47/openmic to ensure a spot and let us know what kind of
equipment you need to perform. You can decide to participate on-site as well, but signing up early
helps us ensure the proper equipment is available. Performance slots will be assigned on a first-come,
first-served basis.
Deadline for submissions: 21 October 2015
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NASA ASTROPHYSICS ASSETS WORKSHOP AT DPS
Astrophysics Asset Workshop
Division for Planetary Sciences
Tuesday, November 10th, 2015
Location: Azalea 1
Agenda and Abstracts
8:00 am – 8:30 am == Welcome and Announcements
8:30 am – 9:00 am == PDS (30 minutes)
9:00 am – 10:30 am == K2 (90 minutes)
10:30 am – 11:00 am == SOFIA (30 minutes)
11:00 am – 12:00 noon == Spitzer (60 minutes)
12:00 pm – 12:30 pm == Lunch break
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm == HST + JWST
1:30 pm – 2:15 pm == IRSA + NEOWISE (45 minutes)
2:15 pm – 4:15 pm == Keck (2hrs)
4:15 pm – 4:45 pm == IRTF (30 minutes)
The Planetary Data System (PDS) archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions,
astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements. The PDS is sponsored by NASA’s Science Mission
Directorate. Its purpose is to ensure the long-term usability of NASA data and to stimulate advanced research.
All PDS data are publicly available and may be exported outside of United States under “Technology and
software Publicly Available” (TSPA) classification. This presentation will focus on the new DPS roadmap
activity and invite the users to join the team in demonstration at the NASA-PDS booth.
HST and JWST are the leading present and near-term space-based observatories, and offer exceptional
capabilities for Solar System science. We will review current status and accomplishments of these missions,
and present various science-policy aspects that are of interest for the DPS community.
The K2 mission makes used of the Kepler spacecraft and expands of its groundbreaking discoveries. The
fields observed by K2 are close to the ecliptic planet and hence are thus rich in Solar System objects including
planets, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). K2 has already performed observations of Neptune and
its large moon Triton, 68 Trojan and Hilda asteroids, 5 TNOs (including Pluto) and Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding
Spring). About thousands of main-belt asteroids that fell into the pixel masks of stars have been have been
serendipitously observed. Uranus will be observed in a future campaign (C8), as will many more small Solar
System bodies. Observations of moving bodies as bright as Jupiter and as faint as V=23 have proved successful.
K2 has an ongoing funded Guest Observer program and which has been successfully proposed to by members
of the planetary science community. We present K2’s plans and capabilities for solar system science and will
have presentations by members of the planetary science community who have used K2 data. This workshop:
* Contains information about the mission and its capabilities
* Discusses the proposal cycles and provides examples
* Has community folks talking about their K2 science
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy makes observations at far-infrared wavelengths possible.
In particular, the range of wavelengths from 30-300 microns is nearly completely obscured form the ground,
including our best mountaintop observatories. By flying in the stratosphere above 95% of atmospheric water
vapor, access is opened to photometric, spectroscopic, and polarimetric observations of Solar System targets
including small bodies through the major planets. Extrasolar planetary systems can be observed through their
debris disks, and forming planetary systems through the protoplanetary disks. We will brief the professional
planetary science community on the capabilities of the observatory and its scientific instrumentation, the
operation of the observatory, the proposal and planning process, and opportunities for involvement in the
observatory itself.
The Spitzer Space Telescope is NASA’s Infrared Great Observatory and can operate until the launch of JWST
in 2018. 100% of the observing time on Spitzer is available through annual calls for proposals and Director’s
Discretionary Time. The IRAC instrument provides unparalleled sensitivity at 3.6 and 4.5 microns that will only
be superseded by JWST. For solar system observations Spitzer supports non-sidereal tracking rates of up to 1
arcsec per second, as well as the ability to do shadow observations for moving targets. Cycle-11 included more
than 1000 hours of solar system observations studying the compositions of near-earth asteroids and comets,
near-earth object characterization, and observations of Pluto in support of the New Horizons mission. We will
present Spitzer’s capabilities, future plans, and some science results from previous and ongoing planetary
programs.
The Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) is the repository for science products from NASA’s infrared and
submillimeter missions, including many large-area and all-sky surveys. IRSA’s portion of the workshop will
describe our tools and datasets of interest to the DPS community, including: how to get moving object
observations out of the Spitzer and WISE archives, the WISE Co-Adder (which can sum up (NEO)WISE
observations of moving targets), and the moving object “Pre-covery” tool. We will briefly cover other tools,
such as FinderChart, and other archives at IRSA, such as the Herschel and Planck archives.
The two W.M. Keck Observatory 10m telescopes regularly observe the increasingly dynamic and diverse
body of objects in our solar system. Every US member of the solar system community has the opportunity to
apply for time on the Keck telescopes through NASA’s call for proposals each March and September. Through
this workshop, NASA and Keck Observatory seek to grow the Keck solar system observing community. We
will present Keck’s current and future instrument capabilities as well as recent solar system science highlights
from high spatial and spectral resolution imaging and spectroscopy. Although much information has been
gained through spectroscopy of planets, comets, and Kuiper belt objects, many current solar system observers
also take advantage of the adaptive optics systems on both Keck 1 and Keck 2 to determine rotation axes and
pinpoint orbits with high astrometric precision. Invited DPS members will share some of their recent Keck
results pertaining to planetary atmospheres, comets, Pluto, and transneptunian objects. We will also provide
information on how you can gain access to the NASA portion of Keck time, the only way that PIs from non
Keck-member institutions can gain access, and highlight resources that are available for your use in the proposal
planning process.
2:15-2:45 Keck Observatory Overview, instrument current and future capabilities, and planning tools available
for proposal preparation – Greg Doppmann and Marc Kassis
2:45-3:00 How to gain access through NASA’s proposal process – Dawn Gelino
3:00-3:15 NIRSPEC reads Mar’s H2O history – Geronimo Villanueva
3:15-3:30 Chemistry of comets – Neil Dello Russo
3:30-3:45 Keck observations of planetary atmospheres – Imke de Pater
3:45-3:50 Complimenting New Horizons with Keck observations of Pluto – Eliot Young
4:00-4:15 Adaptive optics observations of transneptunian binaries – Will Grundy
The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) is a dedicated observatory for mission support and planetary
science research, with 50% of the telescope time allocated to solar system observations. Instruments currently
available include SpeX (a low to moderate spectral resolution 1-5 micron spectrograph and imager), CSHELL (a
high-resolution 1-5 micron infrared spectrograph), MORIS (a CCD camera used in conjunction with SpeX), and
visitor spectrographs covering 5-24 microns. For information, see http://irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/Facility/. We plan
to commission iSHELL, a new cross-dispersed, high-resolution spectrograph for 1-5 microns, during
semester 2016A. We are also upgrading MIRSI, our 8-26 micron camera, and it should be available during
2017A. The IRTF offers remote observing from any site with adequate internet connection, flexible
scheduling (time slots as short as one hour), and daytime observing.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has observed all the planets in our Solar System, apart from Earth and
Mercury. Earth is far better studied by geologists on the ground and specialised probes in orbit. Hubble can’t
observe Mercury as it is too close to the Sun, whose brightness would damage the telescope’s sensitive instruments.
In this presentation, we give a HST Status and Capabilities update with New APT Features for Solar System;
followed by JWST/HST science policy presentation.
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NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TOURS DURING DPS
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will offer on-site tours from 1-6 pm on November 12, 2015 to US citizens
and foreign nationals from non-designated countries (see list here:
http://oiir.hq.nasa.gov/nasaecp/DCList_07-01-15.pdf) that are pre-registered by October 26 through this online
form and are registered participants of the AAS DPS Meeting.
The community has expressed interest in visiting the center and seeing the latest developments on site for
new/current missions, research labs, and other facilities. Goddard has one of the largest conglomerates of
planetary science in the U.S. Tours at GSFC will highlight OSIRIS-Rex, LRO, the multiple Mars
missions/developments, the Astrobiology Analytical laboratory, and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Please register here: https://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/DPSTours/RegistrationForm.html
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Stefanie Milam (stefanie.n.milam at nasa.gov).
We look forward to your visit.
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SBAG MEETING 14: EARLY CAREER TRAVEL SUPPORT
The SBAG 14 meeting is scheduled for January 27-29, 2016 in Pasadena, CA. Logistical details for the
specific location are still in the process of being finalized, and we anticipate having a draft agenda on the
SBAG website in early October.
** If you typically use the NASA Conference Tracking System for your travel, or have a different travel
authorization processes for your institution, please follow those usual procedures. The SBAG 14 meeting
is in the NCTS and available for sign up. **
Early Career Travel Support:
We are planning to offer limited U.S. travel support for early career scientists to participate in the SBAG 14
meeting. Interested graduate students, postdocs, and other early career scientists (within 3 years of
PhD/MS/BS) should submit a letter and a CV to SBAG Early Career Secretary Angela Stickle
([email protected]) by October 21, 2015. Included in the letter, which must not exceed 2 pages,
should be a demonstration of financial need and an explanation of how the applicant’s work relates to the
purposes of SBAG. The letter and CV should be combined into a single PDF document for submission by
e-mail attachment. Recipients of travel support will be expected to give a short presentation of their
SBAG-relevant work at the SBAG 14 meeting. Please pass this opportunity on to appropriate individuals.
Best wishes,
Nancy Chabot
SBAG Chair
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LPSC SPECIAL SESSION DEADLINE
The 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) will be held March 21-25, 2016
at the Woodlands, Texas.
You are encouraged to submit ideas and suggestions for special sessions no later than Friday,
October 2, 2015 via the online submission form so they can be considered, planned, and publicized.
Organizers of these sessions should be prepared to serve on the Program Committee, or to have a fully
empowered delegate serve on the Program Committee, if requested by the Conference Chairs.
Click here to submit a suggestion for a special session
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Send submissions to:
Anne Verbiscer, DPS Secretary ([email protected])
To unsubscribe visit http://aas.org/unsubscribe or email [email protected].
To change your address email [email protected]
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Anne J. Verbiscer
Research Associate Professor
Department of Astronomy
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4325