I’m presently putting together a quick Wiki that will summarize some of the AAS discussion and serve as a virtual meeting point for further collaboration on the White Paper. Anyone wishing to participate or even just to co-sign should email me (acct: loredo, path:astro.cornell.edu) to get on the distribution/discussion list.

There was an enthusiastic and helpful discussion at our lunch meeting; I also had some useful discussions with NSF and NASA officials afterward. There are far too many arguments and ideas to put in a 7pp White Paper (probably closer to 6 once we list all the authors/signers!), so we have quite a job ahead of us.

The first phase of the survey includes deliberations by five Science Frontier Panels (SFPs), organized by astronomical subdiscipline:

Planetary systems and star formation
Stars and stellar evolution
The Galactic neighborhood
Galaxies across cosmic time
Cosmology and fundamental physics

The SFPs are the survey bodies that will review Science White Papers (SWPs). The SFPs will deliberate this Spring, and thus the SWP submission window (yet to be finalized) will be in early February, i.e., just a few weeks after AAS. So the AAS meeting really does represent an important opportunity for us to establish the agenda for an astrostat SWP. Please seriously consider participating!

If you’d like to learn more about the AAS schedule before voicing your own preference, take a look at the general block schedule for a “big picture” view of the AAS meeting, or the more detailed scientific sessions schedule that lets you click through to abstracts.