244th meeting

Press Information

244
Madison, Wisconsin
244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society
Madison, Wisconsin
9 – 13 June 2024
Links

18 April 2024 (updated 22 May with new press conference room location)

Contacts:

Susanna Kohler
AAS Press Officer
+1 202-328-2010 x127

Kerry Hensley
AAS Deputy Press Officer
+1 202-328-2010 x138

Media Invited to 244th AAS Meeting in Madison in June

Astronomers and affiliates from across the country will be gathering in Madison, Wisconsin, this June for the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). From 9 to 13 June 2024 — the year of the AAS’s 125th anniversary — astronomers, students, educators, and journalists will come together at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center (1 John Nolen Dr, Madison, WI 53703) for a full schedule of scientific presentations, community-building workshops, town halls, career sessions, and more. Social media hashtag: #aas244

The AAS offers complimentary in-person press registration to bona fide working journalists and public-information officers (PIOs), as explained below. AAS 244 will feature both an in-person registration option and a limited virtual registration option. In-person press registrants at AAS 244 will also be able to participate in a tour to the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center and Physical Sciences Lab, on Thursday, 13 June; see below for details. 

AAS 244 Meeting Links

Press Registration

The AAS offers complimentary press registration to bona fide working journalists and PIOs who meet the eligibility criteria, as described on the AAS press website.

There will be two options available to press registrants at AAS 244:

  1. In-Person Press – Full Meeting Registration
    This option provides admittance to all in-person meeting events, sessions, and spaces, and it includes access to all virtual content. We ask that you only select the full registration if you do intend to go to Madison, so that we can obtain an approximate on-site head count in advance.
  2. Virtual Press Registration
    This option provides online access to limited meeting content, which will include press conferences, live-streamed plenary talks, the NASA and NSF town halls, and a virtual-only oral session; the iPoster gallery; and the AAS 244 Slack workspace. Content excluded: in-person receptions, workshops, press tour, town halls (except for NASA and NSF), and all oral sessions (except for the virtual-only oral session).

To request press registration, first check our eligibility criteria, then contact the AAS Press Office with your name and media affiliation (or “freelance” if applicable); please specify "AAS 244 IN-PERSON press registration" or "AAS 244 VIRTUAL press registration" in the subject line. If your eligibility is confirmed, you'll receive a special promotional code that you can use to register for the meeting the same way regular attendees do, i.e., via the AAS 244 registration page.

Press registration deadline: Wednesday, 5 June 2024. After this date, we will be unable to process your press registration to attend the meeting. We strongly advise you register in advance to avoid last-minute complications; please send your email request to [email protected] as soon as you know you’re attending the meeting. Full instructions and registration links are available on the AAS 244 press information page.

Press Facilities

The AAS will operate a press office in Meeting Room P on Level 4 of the Monona Terrace Convention Center, with working space, printer/photocopier, power strips, and internet connectivity for reporters and PIOs.

Press conferences will be hosted daily Monday – Wednesday, 10–12 June, to showcase some of the most exciting recent astronomical discoveries. The briefings will be held on-site and live-streamed on Zoom for virtual press conference viewers. They will also be live-streamed on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel (where you will not be able to ask questions; to do that, you will need to participate via Zoom) and archived there.

Press conferences will be held in Hall of Ideas Room F on Level 4. Briefing schedule, topics, and speakers will be announced via another media advisory closer to the meeting date; as always, the press program will be subject to change.

There will be no dedicated press interview space at this meeting, but press registrants can request to use the press conference room to conduct interviews when briefings are not being held. To do so, please use the online signup sheet here.

Press Tour

Press registrants will have the opportunity to join for a special tour after AAS 244 of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center and the Physical Sciences Lab, where equipment for IceCube detector upgrade is currently being built. The tour will be held on Thursday, 13 June; more information will follow in a future announcement. To help us gauge interest in this tour, please fill out the online expression of interest form by 26 April.

Program Points of Interest

Division Meetings

This summer's AAS meeting will be jointly held with the AAS’s Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD). The LAD meeting will include numerous meetings-in-a-meeting on topics like the first results from the asteroid Bennu sample return by OSIRIS/REx, and X-ray spectroscopy at Chandra's 25th anniversary. Erika Kohler (NASA Goddard SFC) will give the LAD plenary lecture. 

Prize Lectures & Invited Talks

AAS 244 will offer 13 prize and invited talks by distinguished astronomers. The meeting opens on Monday morning, 10 June, with the Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture, which will be presented by Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh) on behalf of the UNCOVER JWST project team. With lengthy dedicated imaging and spectroscopy of a single galaxy cluster, the UNCOVER JWST project has enabled us to identify and characterize distant galaxies from some of the earliest stages of our universe.

Several AAS and Division award winners will give prize lectures at the conference. We'll hear from Kristopher Klein (University of Arizona), winner of the Solar Physics Division (SPD) Harvey Prize, on waves and instabilities in the solar wind. SPD's George Ellery Hale Prize lecture will be given this year by Judith Lean (US Naval Research Lab), who will speak on solar irradiance variability and its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. Lean's prize lecture will be preceded by a plenary talk by Sam Hale (Alliance of Historic Observatories), the grandson of George Ellery Hale, who will speak on the prize's namesake.

Via an exchange with the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), we’ll hear from John Peacock (University of Edinburgh, UK), winner of 2023 RAS Gold Medal in Astronomy for his outstanding contributions to the field of cosmology across his career. Rounding out the prize talks, Carl Rodriguez (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will give the Helen B. Warner Prize lecture; Rodriguez's work explores gravitational-wave sources and their connection to the formation of both star clusters and galaxies.

In addition, there will be a host of invited plenaries by distinguished speakers. On Monday, we'll hear from Noemí Pinilla-Alonso (Florida Space Institute) on planetary surfaces. Tuesday will feature a plenary on light pollution given by AAS COMPASSE committee chairs Aparna Venkatesan & Teznie Pugh, as well as lectures by Cecilia Garraffo (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian) on artificial intelligence in astronomy and Thomas Beatty (University of Wisconsin–Madison) on observational studies of exoplanets. On Wednesday, Robert Hurt (IPAC) will speak on data visualization and illustrating astrophysics for the public, and on Thursday, Kerstin Perez (Columbia University) will speak on dark matter.

Town Halls, Special Sessions, Splinter Meetings

Additional programming includes Town Hall meetings for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and Space Telescope Science Institute. Among the many Special Sessions and Splinter Meetings, a few examples that may be of interest to the media are:

  • SDSS-IVever: Continuing Science from SDSS-IV Surveys
  • How do Habitable Planets Form? Research from The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research
  • First Look at Citizen Science from the 8 April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse
  • Beyond the Arecibo Message and Voyager Golden Record: Next Steps in Communicating with Extraterrestrial Intelligence

A Note on Visas and Restrictions for Travel to the United States

Visa requirements for international travelers to the USA have become more stringent, and travel restrictions and measures may be in place for US citizens and international citizens entering the country. If you are an international traveler, you are responsible for determining the current travel restrictions and visa requirements that apply to you. Additional information is available from the US State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you need a letter for a visa application certifying that you are registered for the meeting, please request your complimentary press registration as soon as possible; only after you complete it can the AAS Press Office send you such a letter.

AAS Press List

If you don't already receive press releases by email from the AAS Press Office, you should sign up now to guarantee that you receive future meeting advisories as well as other important announcements. To sign up for the AAS Press List at no charge, please fill out and submit the form you'll find linked from our Join the AAS Press List page. With few exceptions, only accredited journalists and PIOs are eligible to receive press releases from the AAS, as described on our press-credentials page.