52nd DPS Meeting

Press Information

DPS 2020
52nd Annual Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences
Virtually Anywhere
26 – 30 October 2020

6 October 2020 (updated 29 October)

Contacts:
Dr. Shantanu Naidu
DPS Press Officer
+1 917-373-8840 (cell)

Dr. Rick Fienberg
AAS Press Officer
+1 202-328-2010 x116, cell: +1 857-891-5649

The 52nd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) will be held virtually Monday, 26 October, through Friday, 30 October 2020. The AAS/DPS offers complimentary press registration to bona fide working journalists and public-information officers (PIOs); see details below. We will hold daily press conferences via Zoom Monday-Thursday, 26-29 October, to showcase some of the most exciting discoveries being presented at the meeting; see details below.

In addition to the briefings, the meeting will feature a rich science program, including live plenary panel discussions via Zoom, prerecorded short oral presentations via video, digital interactive iPosters on the Web, live Q&A discussions with oral/iPoster presenters, and ongoing asynchronous discussions via Slack.

Some 500 planetary scientists, journalists, and others are already registered, with many more expected to register by the time the conference begins. The meeting hashtag is #DPS2020; you may also wish to follow @DPSMeeting and @AAS_Press on Twitter.

DPS 2020 Meeting Links:

Press Registration

To request complimentary press registration, first check our eligibility criteria, then send an email message to either of the contacts listed above with your name and media affiliation (or “freelance” if applicable). Upon confirming your eligibility, they’ll email you a special promotional code that you can use to register for the meeting the same way regular attendees do, i.e., via the DPS 2020 registration page.

Once you’ve received your promo code, go to that URL and click the orange "Register for 52nd DPS Meeting" button. That will take you to the registration site, where you can sign in if you already have AAS credentials, which is likely if you’ve attended a recent AAS or DPS meeting. If you’re not sure, or if you’ve forgotten your AAS credentials, click the “Forgot username?” or “Forgot password?” link and follow the instructions that pop up, or email [email protected] for assistance. Otherwise you can create a new account.

After you sign in, click the “Register Myself” link if you’re not already on the registration page; then you can complete the registration process. You may see several options at different prices; it doesn’t matter which one you choose, because when you get to the payment screen, enter your promotional code, and click the “Apply” button, the system will recognize you as a press registrant and zero out the fee. If you encounter any problems during registration, email [email protected] or either of the contacts above.

Please register as soon as possible. There’s no hard deadline, but if you wait till the meeting is under way, we may not be able to process your registration in time for you to attend that day’s sessions or press conference. See our current list of press registrants to find out which of your fellow science writers are already planning to join us online.USRA Logo

Thanks to the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) for generously sponsoring the DPS 2020 virtual press office!

Press Conference Schedule, Topics & Speakers

Daily press conferences will be conducted via Zoom for press registrants and any other meeting registrants wishing to attend. They’ll also be live-streamed on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel for other interested people who have not registered for the meeting. You will not be able to ask questions via YouTube — to do that, you need to register for the meeting and join the briefings via Zoom. The briefings will be archived on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel afterward.

Following is the press-conference program, which remains subject to change. Briefings are scheduled as follows (all times are EDT = UTC – 4 hours); each briefing will last 1 hour, including time for Q&A:

In [square brackets] under the speakers’ names are the abstract numbers on which their presentations are based. You can access the abstracts from the scientific program.

All findings are embargoed until the time of presentation at the meeting. “Time of presentation” means the start time of the session in which the paper will be given, or the start time of the corresponding press conference (if any), whichever comes first. See the complete AAS/DPS embargo policy for more information.

Note: All new discoveries are subject to confirmation by independent teams of scientists. Inclusion here does not imply endorsement by the American Astronomical Society or the Division for Planetary Sciences. The AAS and DPS do not endorse individual scientific results.

Added 29 October 2020: Following each briefing date/time is a link to the archived video on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel. Presentation titles link to PDFs of the speakers' presentation slides (if they agreed to provide them). These PDFs are provided for personal use only. If you wish to publish or otherwise reproduce any of the content in these files, you must obtain permission from the presenters — otherwise you may be in violation of copyright law. If you need help contacting a presenter, email the AAS Press Officer. You can read individual abstracts in the public scientific program. Meeting registrants can get to the corresponding prerecorded talks and iPosters by logging in to the virtual meeting platform.

Monday, 26 October 2020, 12 pm EDT   YouTube Video

Increases in Pluto’s Haze Opacity and Column Abundance from 2015 to 2018
Eliot Young (Southwest Research Institute)
[102.04]

Investigating Asteroid (16) Psyche with HST Ultraviolet Observations
Tracy Becker (Southwest Research Institute)
[202.02] | Press Release

Detection of Yarkovsky Acceleration of (99942) Apophis
David Tholen (University of Hawaii)
[214.06] | Press Release

Craters on (101955) Bennu’s Boulders
Ronald-Louis Ballouz (University of Arizona)
[402.01] Press Release

Tuesday, 27 October 2020, 11:00 am EDT   YouTube Video

Surveying the Trans-Neptunian Solar System with TESS
Malena Rice (Yale University)
[304.03] | Press Release

Pluto in Glory: Discovery of a Huge Opposition Surge
Bonnie Buratti (Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech)
[310.03]

Juno/UVS Observations of Transient Luminous Events in Jupiter’s Upper Atmosphere
Rohini Giles (Southwest Research Institute)
[314.01] | Press Release

The Irregular Limb of Menoetius South Pole and Improved Orbital Solution
Noemi Pinilla-Alonso (Florida Space Institute/University of Central Florida)
[401.03]

Wednesday, 28 October 2020, 11:00 am EDT   YouTube Video

Cometary Activity Discovered on Centaur 2014 OG392
Colin Chandler (Northern Arizona University)
[404.02] | Press Release

Contemporaneous Multi-Wavelength Observations of the Active Centaur P/2019 LD2
Laura Woodney (California State University, San Bernardino)
[404.05] | Press Release

The Physical Processes Restricting Dusty Debris Disks to Cooler White Dwarfs
Jordan Steckloff (Planetary Science Institute)
[306.05]

New Candidate Exogenous Material on Asteroid Bennu Identified with OSIRIS-REx MapCam and PolyCam Images
Humberto Campins (University of Central Florida)
[402.03] | Press Release

Thursday, 29 October 2020, 10:45 am EDT   YouTube Video

Resurfacing Processes on Asteroid (162173) Ryugu Caused by an Artificial Impact of Hayabusa2’s Small Carry-on Impactor
Masahiko Arakawa (Kobe University)
[405.01] | Press Release

How Jupiter and Saturn’s Secular Architecture Constrains Their Early Orbital Evolution
Matthew Clement (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
[504.05] | Press Release

First Results with a Network of Small Digital & Smart Telescopes: Citizen Science for Astronomy
Thomas Esposito (SETI Institute / Unistellar)
[413.02] | SETI Institute Press Release | Unistellar Press Release

First Occultation Observations by a Small NEO, (3200) Phaethon
David Dunham (KinetX Aerospace, Inc.)
[412.01] | Press Release (PDF) | Images & Videos

All registrants will receive email instructions for navigating the meeting program and accessing the live and prerecorded sessions. These emails will begin going out the week of 12 October. If you don’t receive instructions for logging in to the meeting by Friday, 23 October, please contact the AAS Press Officer and/or the DPS Press Officer (contact info appears at the top of this page).

AAS Press-Release-Distribution Service

If you don't already receive astronomy-related press releases forwarded by email from the AAS Press Office, you should sign up now to guarantee that you receive future meeting advisories as well as electronic copies of all press releases issued during the meeting. To sign up for the AAS press-release-distribution service, for which there is 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 forwarded by the AAS, as described on that page.