Newsletter 19-02

Issue 19-02, January 17, 2019

 

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  1. MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR: HELP END THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: CONTACT YOUR SENATE AND HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES TODAY
  2. EPSC-DPS 2019 JOINT MEETING: FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR SESSIONS
  3. SBAG JANUARY 2019 MEETING AND REGISTRATION DEADLINE
  4. SIGN UP FOR AAS CONGRESSIONAL VISITS DAY 2019
  5. NEW HORIZONS IN PLANETARY SYSTEMS
  6. OPAG ANNOUNCEMENT: UPDATE ON OPAG MEETING PLANNING
  7. ABSCICON 2019: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS ON “OBSERVATIONS OF OCEAN WORLDS”
  8. BINARY ASTEROIDS 5
  9. THE DPS COMMITTEE REMINDS YOU TO VOTE IN THE AAS ELECTIONS
  10. JOBS, POSITIONS, OPPORTUNITIES

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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR: HELP END THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: 

CONTACT YOUR SENATE AND HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES TODAY

 

The continuing government shutdown is beginning to have significant impacts

on governtment-funded missions, facilities, and research, including DPS

members and their families.  So please contact your representatives in Congress

and encourage them to work with their colleagues to end this shutdown. 

 

Tell your representatives in Congress how the shutdown is impacting you in 

your professional and personal life, and ask them to pass legislation today that

ends the shutdown, provides full-year spending to these agencies, and gets 

federal employees back to work.

 

Contact your Senate and House representatives.  Specific contact information

can be found at  https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.

 

Also, send a brief message to the White House at  

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

 

Linda Spilker

DPS Chair

 

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EPSC-DPS 2019 JOINT MEETING: FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR SESSIONS 

 

The EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019 will take place at the Centre

International de Conférences de Genève (CICG), Geneva, Switzerland,

from 15–20 September 2019. 

 

The success of this joint meeting is founded on the excellence of its sessions

and conveners. So we encourage you to make session proposals on the conference

website by 5 February 2019: 

 

https://www.epsc-dps2019.eu 

 

The meeting will cover the whole scope of planetary science and you can propose

sessions for the following programme groups: 

TP – Terrestrial Planets

OPS – Outer Planet Systems

MIT – Missions, Instrumentation, Techniques

SB – Small Bodies (comets, KBOs, rings, asteroids, meteorites, dust)

EXO – Exoplanets and Origins

ODA – Outreach, Diversity, Amateur Astronomy 

 

We look forward to many good proposals for exciting sessions. 

 

Please contact us at [email protected] in case of any questions. 

 

Best regards, 

Maria Cristina De Sanctis & Joe Spitale

Scientific organizing committee chairs 

 

Jean-Pierre Lebreton

Executive EPSC committee chair 

 

Linda Spilker

DPS Chair

 

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SBAG JANUARY 2019 MEETING AND REGISTRATION DEADLINE

 

To the Small Bodies community: 

We have decided to proceed with SBAG 20, the meeting of the Small Bodies 

Assessment Group, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, January 29-31.

While we were, like everyone else, hoping that the partial government shutdown

would be resolved long before this, the folks who will be running the meeting

for us work for organizations that have not run out of money yet, and there was

a feeling among the Steering Committee that it is important to have a meeting

of some sort, and that a physical meeting (with a virtual option) was preferable,

particularly if the shutdown resolves in the next week or two.

 

Please visit the meeting website for details about logistics, registration, and a

preliminary agenda :

 

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/

 

The registration deadline is Friday, January 18, 2019.

 

Thanks, and I hope to see many of you, or at least to be able to interact with

you via Adobe Connect. 

Tim Swindle,

SBAG Chair

 

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SIGN UP FOR CONGRESSIONAL VISITS DAY 2019

 

Every year the AAS brings volunteers to Washington, DC, for Congressional

Visits Day (CVD) to advocate for federal support of their science with their

members of Congress. This year the AAS CVD will be held Monday-Wednesday,

11-13 March 2019. Would you like to advocate for the research efforts, education

programs, and facilities in the planetary sciences that enable STEM engagement

and innovation across disciplines and sectors? Then read on, and sign up today!

The AAS aims to select at least 15 volunteers who balance the program by

division membership, location, career stage, and experience. Find more details

and the CVD 2019 Sign-Up Form at:

 

https://aas.org/posts/blog/2019/01/call-volunteers-congressional-visits-day-2019

 

Sign-ups are open now through 26 January 2019. Selected volunteers will be

notified in mid-February 2019. Note that: You must be an AAS member; You

must be eligible to vote in the United States; Business attire is required; The

AAS will cover the majority of travel expenses for volunteers selected to

participate, as our budget allows; and Submitting the form does not guarantee

you a slot in this year’s CVD.  Also look ahead for AAS participation in the

Science-Engineering-Technology (SET) Working Group CVD sometime in

May-June 2019 (exact dates TBD).  

 

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NEW HORIZONS IN PLANETARY SYSTEMS

 

NOTE: February 1st is the deadline for abstract submission and applications

for travel and childcare support 

 

New Horizons in Planetary Systems

Understanding  planetary  systems  from  protoplanetary  disks  through  to 

the  solar  system,  exoplanets  and  debris  disks 13-17 May 2019 Victoria,

British Columbia, Canada 

 

Financial Assistance

Travel support as well as childcare support will be available for those who

need financial assistance to attend.

For more information, see the meeting website:

http://go.nrao.edu/NewHorizons  

 

Web: http://go.nrao.edu/NewHorizons

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicplanetsys

Twitter: #VicPlanetSys 

 

The meeting is jointly organized by NRC Herzberg and NRAO  – as part of

their roles within the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC) and

will have a broad scope, including planetary systems in formation within

protoplanetary disks, minor objects in the solar system, debris disks and

exoplanets. Experts will be asked to provide insights from all these fields to

enhance our understanding of how planets form and evolve.  

 

Although it is organized by the NAASC, the meeting is not ALMA-centric,

with a strong focus on the impact of the New Horizons mission flyby of a

Kuiper Belt Object in January 2019, as well as experts from the Transiting

Exoplanet Survey Satellite and other facilities, who will be asked to provide

a multi-chromatic picture of the current understanding in their fields. Invited

speakers have been asked to provide broadly accessible talks.  

 

 

The meeting will be held at the Victoria Conference Centre in the heart of

picturesque Victoria, British Columbia, on Canada’s Pacific coast. Local

attractions include whale watching, wine tours, the world-famous Butchart

Gardens, and the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory.  Excellent beaches,

diving, camping and hiking are all within a day’s drive from Victoria.    

 

Invited speakers 

• Diana Dragomir (MIT Kavli Institute): TESS early results

• Brett Gladman (UBC): theory of planet formation

• Grant Kennedy (Warwick): debris disk constraints on planet formation

• Heather Knutson (Caltech): exoplanet atmospheric composition

• Emmanuel Lellouch (Obs de Paris): solar system objects, constraints on formation

• Karin Öberg (Harvard): protoplanetary disk composition and chemistry

• John Spencer (SWRI): New Horizons KBO flyby: first results

• Geronimo Villaneuva (NASA Goddard): cometary chemistry and early planet formation

• Zhaohuan Zhu (UNLV): Protoplanetary disk composition/chemistry 

 

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OPAG ANNOUNCEMENT: UPDATE ON OPAG MEETING PLANNING

 

Due to the ongoing US Government Shutdown, the OPAG Steering Committee

has decided to postpone the next OPAG meeting, which was originally

planned for February 5-6 at NASA Headquarters.

 

We are currently tentatively planning to have the meeting on April 23-24 in Washington

DC area.

 

Please stay tuned to various planetary science newsletters and the OPAG

website for future updates.

 

see: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/

 

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ABSCICON 2019: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS ON “OBSERVATIONS OF OCEAN WORLDS”

 

Abstract submissions are welcomed for Session 66117:

“Observations of Ocean Worlds from Spacecraft, Ground and Space Observatories”

 

Session Description:

NASA’s space missions to the giant planets – the Pioneers, Voyagers,

Galileo and Cassini – have dramatically revised our understanding of the

outer solar system, especially with regard to the icy moons and Titan.

Multiple lines of evidence – gravitational, observational and direct sensing

of magnetic fields and particle environments – now point to previously

unanticipated interior oceans in multiple bodies including Enceladus, Titan

and the three outermost Galilean satellites of Jupiter. Moreover, the Dawn

mission at Ceres and New Horizons flyby of the Pluto-Charon system have

hinted at further liquid interiors in these dwarf planets. In addition, these

bodies have attracted significant attention from ground and space-based

observatories: including Hubble, Keck, ALMA and others; with the objective

of reinforcing mission measurements and making new findings. In the future,

the promise of new deep space facilities such as JWST and WFIRST, and

thirty-meter class ground-based telescopes for further discovery is enticing.

This session solicits research contributions focusing on observations of ocean

worlds from across the spectrum, from space missions and observatories to

terrestrial telescopes. In addition, we welcome experimental and theoretical

work of all types that aim to support, model or interpret observational data,

with the goal of promoting synergistic science and exchange of results.

 

AbSciCon 2019 will be held in Bellevue, Washington from June 24-28th.

The recently extended abstract deadline is Wednesday March 6th 11:59 PM ET at:  

https://connect.agu.org/abscicon/program/abstract-submission-guidelines

 

Conveners: Conor Nixon, Stefanie Milam, Carly Howett,

Lucas Paganini, Anne Verbiscer.

 

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BINARY ASTEROIDS 5

 

The first Binary Asteroids in the Solar System Workshop was held in Steamboat 
Springs, CO, in 2007. The workshop has been held every three years since in 
Poland, Hawai’i, and the Czech Republic. 

It is time for the 5th workshop, which will return to Colorado, this time in 
Fort Collins, near the Colorado State University campus, on 2019 September 3-5. 
Details are available at 

    http://binaryast5.org/ 

The number of participants is limited to a maximum of 60. Registration and 
abstract submission are now open. 

The workshops are characterized by a relaxed atmosphere and free format, with 
almost as much time for discussion as for the presentations themselves. 

The goal of the workshop is to bring together various ideas on the detection, 
characterization, formation, and implications of binary and multiple objects 
among the NEO, main-belt, Trojan, Centaur, TNO populations. We hope to include 
all of the many modes of observation, in all of the dynamical populations, as 
well as theory and numerical modeling of formation and evolution of these 
systems. We especially welcome the new topics of rings of small bodies, and 
heliocentric orbital pairs of asteroids and their implications. 

There should be some funds available for students to waive either the 
registration fee or for travel support. Students hoping for a grant 
should register soon. No payment will be required at the time. However, 
registering will reserve a seat in the meeting room pending review of 
the request. Proof of student status may be required. 

We’re looking for professionals to volunteer to serve on the SOC. If willing, 
 

please send an email to Brian D. Warner 

 

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THE DPS COMMITTEE REMINDS YOU TO VOTE IN THE AAS ELECTIONS

 

Don’t forget to vote in AAS elections. The DPS is the largest AAS division.

The following DPS members are candidates for AAS Officers and At-Large Trustees:

 

President – Chick Woodward

Vice President – Stephen Unwin

Secretary – Alice K.B. Monet

At-Large Trustee – Hannah Jang-Condell

 

Balloting closes at 11:59 pm EST on 31 January 2019

https://aas.org/posts/news/2018/12/vote-2019-aas-election

 

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JOBS, POSITIONS, OPPORTUNITIES

 

A) POST-DOC POSITION ON EXOPLANETS AT MEUDON OBSERVATORY

 

The Laboratoire d’Etudes Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique

(LESIA, France) invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship in

exoplanet atmospheric and spectroscopic studies. The candidates will join

the team funded by the ANR “e-PYTHEAS” (http://e-pytheas.cnrs.fr/) led

by Dr. Athena Coustenis at LESIA. The initial appointment will be for 18

months, with a possible 6-month extension. 

The successful candidate will work closely with Dr. Benjamin Charnay and

Dr. Bruno Bézard and also interact with members of the e-PYTHEAS team,

including A. Coustenis, P. Drossart, T. Encrenaz (LESIA), P. Lavvas (GSMA,

France) and G. Tinetti (UCL, UK), as well as with spectroscopists in the

team providing important data for these studies. He/she will also be involved

in the preparation of the newly selected ESA ARIEL mission

(https://ariel-spacemission.eu).

 

The e-PYTHEAS team obtained new ab initio molecular line lists in the

1-17 μm wavelength region for hydrocarbons and their isotopologues such

as 12CH4, 13CH4, CH3D, C2H2, C2H4 and C2H6 up to 2500 K

(http://theorets.univ-reims.fr/molecules). The main goal of the postdoc

project is to analyze the effects of these new line lists on transit and

emission spectra of warm/hot exoplanets and to estimate the detectability

of these molecules by current (HST, VLT, …) and future telescopes

(JWST, ARIEL, ELT). Transit and emission spectra will be produced

at low and high spectral resolution using a 1-D radiative-convective

model developed at LESIA (Exo-REM). The candidate will incorporate

the new molecular opacities in the atmospheric model and adapt Exo-REM

to irradiated planets and transit spectroscopy. He/she will afterwards apply

it to brown dwarfs and young giant exoplanets observed by direct imaging

(e.g. VLT/SPHERE) and to warm/hot transiting exoplanets observed by

e.g. Spitzer or HST.

 

The successful candidate will be hosted by LESIA in Meudon, France.

The net salary will be around 2400€/month + reimbursement of transport

fees. Benefits include complete health insurance coverage and social security,

as required by French law. The position is for 18 months.

 

A PhD in physics, astronomy or a related discipline is required at the time

when the position starts. Expertise in radiative transfer and molecular

spectroscopy modelling is required.

 

Applications must be received electronically at:

https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR8109-SYLDES-003/Default.aspx

by February 28th, 2019 for full consideration.

 

The successful applicant is expected to start between April and October 2019.

 

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Send submissions to: 

Anne Verbiscer, DPS Secretary ([email protected]

 

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