American Astronomical Society Announces National Meeting Media Events

    The American Astronomical Society announces the media events for its
 national meeting at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
 June 8-12.  News highlights include the official release of the latest
 observations from two new instruments installed in the Hubble Space Telescope
 by NASA astronauts in February, progress report on the instruments' status,
 new research on black holes, and more.  All media events have been scheduled
 for Monday and Tuesday, June 9-10.
     Prominent scientists expected at the American Astronomical Society meeting
 include Yale University black-hole hunter Dr. Charles Bailyn, who was featured
 in the second episode of PBS's "Mystery of the Universe" TV series in April.
 He will present a press conference on his latest surprising findings at
 9:00 a.m. Tuesday.  Other eminent attendees include Dr. James Cronin,
 (University of Chicago) who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1980, and who
 will present the final talk at the meeting, on the theory of the highest
 energy cosmic rays, and Harvard's Dr. Alastair G.W. Cameron, who is being
 honored as the Society's Henry Norris Russell Lecturer for 1997.  He'll speak
 on "Formation of Stars and Planets."
     Media headquarters for the meeting is the AAS Press Room, which will open
 by Noon Sunday, June 8 in Conference Room 2 at the Convention Center.  The
 telephone numbers at the Press Room are 910-727-8463 and 910-727-8464.  The
 fax number is 910-722-0537.  For press credentials at the meeting or more
 information, contact ASS Press Officer Dr. Steve Maran at 301-286-5154 through
 June 6, at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Winston-Salem, 910-725-3500, on June 7,
 and at the Press Room thereafter.
     Besides the five news briefings, many press releases and photo releases on
 other discoveries, and one or two video releases, will be available at the
 Press Room.  The press conferences will not be televised, but the audio from
 the Hubble Space Telescope briefing will be available to absentee reporters
 via a NASA communications facility (see briefings list, below).
     All press releases and scientific findings are strictly embargoed until
 presented at the meeting.
     Here is the schedule of press conferences; all briefings are in
 Conference Room 5 at the Benton Convention Center, 301 West 5th St.,
 Winston-Salem:
 
     Monday, June 9:
 
     --  9:00 a.m.  The Origin of Star Clusters, with Dr. Bruce Elmegreen,
                    IBM Watson Research Center
     --  12:45 p.m. The Latest from the Hubble Space Telescope, with
                    Drs. Bruce Woodgate, Mary Beth Kaiser, and George Sonneborn
                    (all of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center), Rodger
                    Thompson (University of Arizona), Nicholas Scoville
                    (California Institute of Technology), and Edward
                    Jenkins (Princeton University).
 
     Tuesday, June 10:
     --  9:00 a.m.  "Cookie Cutter" Black Holes, with Prof. Charles Bailyn,
                    Yale University.  If you've seen one black hole have you
                    seen them all?
 
     --  11:00 a.m. Gamma Ray Bursts, with a panel of experts from the U.S. and
                    Europe.  We may have solved a mystery that has puzzled
                    astronomers for three decades.  These remarkable flashes of
                    radiation, each, for a brief moment, outshine the rest of
                    the Universe in gamma rays.
 
     --  2:30 p.m.  Remarkable Reports from Amateur Astronomers.  With Dennis
                    di Cicco, who has discovered over 100 asteroids of our
                    solar system with his backyard telescopes in a Boston
                    suburb, Thomas Droege of Batavia, Illinois, who has
                    organized and equipped The Amateur Sky Survey, and Columbia
                    University's Dr. Joseph Patterson, whose network of
                    cooperating amateur astronomers have proven that a
                    remarkable double star follows orbits so small, they would
                    fit inside the planet Jupiter.
 
     Newsworthy findings not featured in press conferences, but which will be
 announced in press releases at the meeting include a promising new theory for
 the origin of chondrules, the strange rounded objects found in ancient
 meteorites, which have defied explanation for generations, a striking new
 galaxy image from the WIYN Telescope in Arizona, observations and images from
 a DOD-sponsored satellite ultraviolet instrument, new evidence bearing on the
 origin of cosmic rays in the Milky Way, the first likely evidence for a
 special form of interstellar carbon-bearing molecule that may have been
 important to the development of life, and many others.
     Scientific sessions at the AAS meeting will continue through 12:30 p.m.
 Thursday, June 12.
 
     CONTACT:  Dr. Steve Maran, Press Officer of the American Astronomical
 Society, 301-286-5154.
 
 

SOURCE  American Astronomical Society