It's been called "the Super Bowl of Astronomy."
It's like Comic Con for space junkies.
Home, sweet home for noble space nerds.
All week long.
Never mind the huge year that space travel and technology had in 2014 - this week kicks off the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, where over 2,600 scientists, journalists and educators get to mingle and share ideas from Jan. 4 to Jan. 8, according to Space.com.
"This 225th AAS meeting will feature more than 1,900 scientific presentations, including prize and invited lectures, short oral talks, and posters," the press kit stated. Discussions will include topics like "new alien planet findings, far away galaxies and other new space discoveries."
Officials from NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope will host town hall meetings, according to the press kit, and attendees can enjoy presentations from made-history to history in the making, like the Hubble Telescope.
"The Seattle meeting offers no fewer than 17 prize and invited talks by distinguished astronomers, beginning with the Kavli Lecture by Daniel Baker (University of Colorado, Boulder) on the Earth-girdling Van Allen radiation belts and ending with the Berkeley Prize Lecture by David Weinberg (Ohio State University) on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's contributions to astrophysics," AAS stated.
There are usually two AAS meetings per year, but this year the International Astronomical Union is hosting its general assembly in Hawaii in August, so AAS will join that meeting instead of having a separate summer meeting.
