The 2025 edition of the annual Goldschmidt Conference will be held in Prague next week. https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2025/meetingapp.cgi/Home/0 For starters, Victor Goldschmidt basically founded the modern science of cosmochemistry. He named the element categories- lithophiles, chalcophiles, siderophiles, and atmophiles- we use today… Read More »Goldschmidt 2025
Yes, it’s time for the 33rd Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG). https://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/sbagjune2025/ See the schedule: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/sbagjune2025/technical_program/?session_no=101 Really, the overarching theme was the strangling of planetary science, and not just at small bodies. We are talking about… Read More »Summer 2025 SBAG Meeting, Day 1
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) will hold its biannual (Summer) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this week. Even though this “general” meeting includes the sub-meetings of the Laboratory Astrophysics Division and Solar Physics Division, there’s still relevant content here for the… Read More »Summer AAS Meeting 2025 (Anchorage)
Last week was the American Astronomical Society‘s DDA sub-meeting. The DDA (Division on Dynamical Astronomy) covered “particles” (discrete objects, from dust all the way up to individual stars) as they behave under physical laws (mostly gravity, but also impacts, etc.)… Read More »56th AAS-DDA Meeting
It’s time for the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2025, from 25-30 May 2025. (Sorry, we here not in Japan had a holiday.) Like the AGU and EGU, the conference deals with Earth sciences, extending all the way up to other… Read More »2025 Japan Geoscience Union Meeting
Commissioning of systems on the Vera Rubin Observatory continues. Tuning of the active optics systems (NOT adaptive optics) continues. This past week, both Alpha Centauri and Earth’s natural satellite became visible. These bright objects served as crude calibrators, allowing tests… Read More »Vera Rubin Update (Mid-May 2025)
…see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 It’s now Day 5 of a weeklong conference: wrapping up loose ends. Here, the less technical but no less important soft sciences. And posters; lots and lots of posters. Panel Session… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 5
…see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 And now on Day 4 of the PDC, we get to the dramatic, unlikely (and hopefully never likely in our era) part of planetary defense: mitigation. That’s action taken when the impactor has… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 4
The IAA’s Planetary Defense Conference for 2025 (every odd year) is now going on in Stellenbosch (basically Cape Town), South Africa. No, I am not attending, and …arrg, the program still says “preliminary.” Well, for what it’s worth, here’s the… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 1
The 2025 meeting of the European Geosciences Union has occurred. And yes, there was relevant content in a geophysics conference. Small bodies are subject to physical laws too: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/meetingprogramme Monday, 28 AprilTue, 29 AprWed, 30 AprThu, 01 MayFri, 02 May… Read More »EGU General Assembly 2025