(Edit: Now that I've had some time to digest... It looks like the live events being webcasted are the press conferences, and not AAS meetings in general. Sorry if I misled. I wanted to report this quickly, and didn't have the details right. I was trying to herd BAUT members to the event while also trying to listen to the event. Yeah, you probably have to pay real money, and, like, attend, to hear the AAS meetings.)

Phil Plait and Pamela Gay (and probably others) are doing Ustream 'casts (with chat for questions) of meetings from the AAS (American Astronomical Society) annual conference.

Right now, some guy (David Bennett of Notre Dame University, I think) is talking about a recently discovered low-mass exoplanet, found through micro-lensing. And I'm sitting here watching -- and participating if a question comes to mind.

How cool is that?

Chat room is pretty empty. Come on over and have a seat!

Live AAS meeting (contents vary over time)

See BA Blog: AAS press conferences — streamed live! (Oh. Maybe it's not meetings, but press conferences.)

===

Edit: And the news of the particular presentation on right now, breaking before my eyes, is described in BA Blog: Welcome our tiny family

BBC: Tiniest extrasolar planet found

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I should have mentioned: I think that's it for Monday's press events. In AAS Day 1 Plans, Pamela Gay, starstryder, had two announced/scheduled (plus a New Media presentation that is going on now in another channel, maybe almost over).

Edit: new media is over. Tomorrow may bring more.

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Pucker up.

BA Blog: Tuesday AAS press conferences

See newer article(s) in the BA Blog for details.

First streamed press conference starts:
0740 PDT
0940 CDT
1040 EDT
1440 UTC

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From a comment to the blog entry cited above, it looks like a schedule is:

June 3 0940 CDT - Weird Binary Stars: 2 reports
June 3 1200 CDT - Milky Way: 5 reports
June 4 0930 CDT - Speculative Astrophysics: 3 reports

Something about there being 11 reports total doesn't add up.

The location is probably the Bad Astonomy Ustream Channel, but check the blog for details.


Edit: On now. Channel is actually:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/astron...rence-coverage

Cool. A tight binary pair inside a red giant. Yeah, that's weird.

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Up now:
June 3 1200 CDT - Milky Way: 5 reports

Links in various sources (Universe Today, BA Blog) are to: AAS Press Conferences [Edit: bad link; should be AAS Press Conferences], but that gives me unusual 404 not found. You just get a blue-screen video window when there's nothing on; 404 sounds more screwed up.

I'll holler if anything shows up anywhere.

Edit: On the channel for a new media presentation that ended recently, some of the crowd hung around, and one person is relating events: Barbara Whitney is talking about GLIMPSE survey. I don't know if that's the press conference content. Nobody said why the press conference channel gives 404. [Edit: it was a bad URL.]

Second hand, from person watching, it's about bubbles found, hundreds, spaces around stars where they ionize all the gas.
Done.

Sean Carey is 2nd press conference presenter... Oops channel started working. I'm off to watch...

Edit: See topic Two of the Milky Way's Spiral Arms Go Missing. Pretty!

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The next press conference appears to be:

June 4 0930 CDT - Speculative Astrophysics: 3 reports

I don't know where on Ustream it is supposed to be. The previous press conference, after some initial confusion, happened at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/astron...rence-coverage.

If it's not there, check the usual sources for advice, BA Blog, StarStryder, Universe Today. (I probably won't be around, so don't look to me.)

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good concept but was a little to choppy for me.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

That was a common experience I think. Audio needs work.

If you can hear the speaker and it looks like crud that's not so bad (until the speaker throws up a slide you're supposed to read). Audio would drop out totally, probably a digital problem, lack of bandwidth. Ambient noise, muddy sound, lack of mic -- or lack of feed from mic -- on speaker happened often. Usually it would get straightened out eventually, but a lot would be missed.

Before too long, a good feed might just be something conferences and the like provide, along with lights, mics and a soundboard.

Our new-media pioneers, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay, Fraser Cain and allies are in the front lines and I salute their courage. It's a tough job.

The results were still enjoyable for the most part, despite the very rough edges.

And... the AAS Conference is over so I don't expect more from there.

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