Astronomical Ale

There was a request for a photo of the bottle of Galileo's Astronomical Ale:

From Women In Astronomy

You probably can't read it, but it says "theoretically the best beer in the universe" in white there at the bottom.  I can't say I particularly like beer at all, but my friends who do claim it was good.

AAS 213th Meeting: ICWIP Poster

The AAS Meeting is over, and I'm back home now. But, before moving on, I wanted to bring your attention to the poster put together by the glamorous and talented Emily Freeland about the 3rd IUPAP Conference on Women in Astronomy, which happened last October in Seoul, Korea. The poster was up on Thursday, which meant hardly anyone saw it, having already left the meeting, so I'm posting it here so everyone can see it! It features me giving a really weird look to Nick Murphy and Jake Blickenstaff, so how can you resist?

(Click on "Link to full post" to view the poster)

From Women In Astronomy

AAS 213th Meeting: IYA Opening

Tonight, I went to the opening reception for the IYA kick-off in the US. They gave out free beer: Sierra Nevada Galileo's Astronomical Ale. "Theoretically the best beer in the universe." I got one just so I could keep the bottle.

There were speeches made, and the opening of some island in Second Life, which they showed for us on one of the screens up front. I'm too busy with my first life to want a Second Life, so I'm not following any of the Second Life stuff, but you can at secondastronomy.org.

Then followed a screening of the movie 400 Years of Galileo's Telescope, which features an awful lot of white guys, with the exception of Wendy Freedman, Claire Max, and Catherine Cesarsky. (Also, one of the white guys was my friend John D, who's in there for all of two seconds, so now I'm going to tease him mercilessly about it.) I couldn't help but feel like maybe they could have featured more women in it. And talked more other subfields of astronomy than cosmology. For instance, they went on and on about dark energy, but never once dark matter. Then they could have interviewed Vera Rubin!

Some day, I'd like to see a video on popular astronomy, filled with interviews with experts who happen to be women. I bet it could be done.

AAS 213th Meeting: CSWA Town Hall recap

Today's panel discussion featured six women in various stages of their careers: Virginia Trimble, Meg Urry, Jennifer Hoffman, Jane Rigby, Ginny McSwain, and Caty Pilachowski. Geoff Clayton, chair of the CSWA, started off the discussion with an interesting question: is there still a role for the CSWA these days?

On the face of it, barriers have largely been swept aside. Women can attend graduate school. Women are allowed into observatories. Women can receive tenure at Ivy League universities. There was a time when this wasn't the case. Still more promising, the percentage of women in astronomy at the undergraduate level and entering graduate school is approaching parity. However, there was a general consensus that the fight is not yet over. Women still get discriminated against in more subtle ways. Also, there are still few women at the top level, and until equity is reached at all levels, there is still room for change.

During the discussion, a number of concrete suggestions were made and I'll simply list them here:

• There is a Women in Astronomy Database, which is a useful resource for finding women to invite as speakers, ask to apply for jobs, serve on committees, etc. This database is user-maintained however, so you need to add yourself to the database and keep your entry up-to-date. I think this resource is under-utilized, so I'm posting it here in hopes that advertising it will remind people to update their listings. I just updated mine!
  
• Mentoring is extremely important. MentorNet is a great place to find a mentor, but you can only use it if your institution subscribes to it. But, if you join AWIS (Association for Women in Science), you can join MentorNet through them, even if your institution does not subscribe.
  
• The APS (American Physical Society) has a program where if your institution invites two women to give talks, APS will pay for a third one to come.
  

Also, Geoff put in a plug for this blog at the beginning of the session, so now there's a whole new pile of readers, yes? What are your thoughts from the session?

AAS 213th Meeting: Day 1

Today's my busy day: I'm both presenting a poster and chairing an oral session. But now that the oral session is done, I finally have a chance to go online for a bit.

Today's big news was announced both by John Huchra, AAS President, this morning, and by Meg Urry during the CSWA Town Hall. The AAS will be providing childcare at the next three winter meetings! I think this is totally awesome, even I personally won't benefit. My kids are old enough that they are in school now, so it's simpler for me to just leave them at home with my husband. Still, I think it's a great step forward. I've seen several women pushing strollers or toting infants, and it seems like every year there are more of them. So I'm sure that this will come as a great relief to many.

It sounds like the childcare will be pretty affordable: $8/hr, is what Meg said this afternoon, because it will be heavily subsidized by an industry sponsor. This program will not replace the current childcare grants program, where you can apply for $100 toward childcare at the AAS Meeting, so you can apply for the grant *and* use the on-site childcare.

The important thing is that this is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition: if they don't get enough people using the service, "it will go away for good" as Meg said. So if you're in a position to use this service, do it!

Okay, that's about all the time I have for now: I'll post a recap of the CSWA session later.

AAS 213th Meeting: Day 0

Well, here I am in Long Beach!

I plan to live-blog from the AAS Meeting here this week. Tomorrow should be off to a great start: the CSWA Session meets tomorrow at lunchtime. 12:45pm in Room 104B.

Also of note:

• Monday at 3:40pm: Lisa Kewley -- Pierce Prize talk
  
• Tuesday at 11:40am: Penny Sackett -- invited talk
  
• Tuesday at 4:30pm: Andrea Ghez -- invited talk
  
• Wednesday at 3:40pm: Jenny Greene -- Cannon Prize talk
  

My count is 2 of 7 Prize or Named Lecture talks are by women, with the caveat that the Cannon Prize is specifically for women.
Also, 2 of the 7 invited talks are by women. Not too bad a representation. Someone has been paying attention.

AAS Meeting: CSWA Town Hall

Here's a plug for the CSWA Town Hall, on Monday, January 5, at 12:45-1:45 in Rm 104B. This year's session will feature a panel of women astronomers at various stages in their careers. The idea is to reflect on how far we've come and where we're going in terms of gender equity in astronomy. The panelists will be

• Virginia Trimble
  
• Meg Urry
  
• Jennifer Hoffman
  
• Jane Rigby
  
• Ginny McSwain
  
• Caty Pilachowski
  

I'm sure it will be a great discussion, so come on by!

AAS Meeting

It's late December. Christmas is past, universities are on winter break, and New Year's is just around the corner. It's a special time of year for astronomers in particular, because...

... next week is the AAS Meeting!!!

It's sometimes said that a year's worth of astronomy gets done in the last week of the year, and that probably isn't too far off. However, my poster is already ready to go, since I'm recycling one from a previous conference. But the conference I presented it at last wasn't a pure astronomy conference, so I'm not cheating, right?

I always find the January AAS Meeting to be overwhelming in size. It's hard to take in everything. Then again, if you compare the 3000 or so who descend on the AAS Meeting to the tens of thousands who go to the AGU Meeting every year, maybe I shouldn't complain.

I'm not alone in my feelings about big meetings. Science Woman feels the same way about the AGU.

It's not the science, it's the meeting (people). As DrugMonkey says over and over again, it's all about the networking.

So this AGU, my poster was the excuse to spend the money on the plane ticket, hotel, registration and food. (San Francisco is not cheap!) And this AGU, I did listen to some really amazing scientific talks and read some excellent posters. But mostly, I wanted to talk to the movers and shakers and rising stars in my subdisciplines.

Yeah, that sounds about right. So, on Sunday I'll be off to Long Beach, pre-displayed poster on hand, off to meet and greet. You know, it's funny, we women are supposed to be such social animals, always chatting with our friends and using our great communication skills. Yet, when it comes to the networking that leads to opportunities and success, we somehow get left our of the loop. What's with that anyway?