Anthony Rapp, who plays Lt. Commander Paul Stamets in the new series Star Trek Discovery, was the opening keynote speaker at the 2019 AbSciCon held this week in Seattle, WA.  In addition to expressing his admiration for the scientific work done by the Astrobiology community, he also expressed support for efforts to diversity the scientific community.

In other news, Michael Meyer presented a talk based on former PhD student Tim Lichtenberg’s thesis work, which was picked up in some media outlets.  And yes, because the story had something to do with Water-worlds as a common outcome of planet formation models, they used this image to lead into the story.

Michael also participated in a session entitled “Exploring the Planetary System of Alpha Center” where he presented a poster on the prospects of imaging terrestrial planets with the ESO ELT using the METIS thermal infrared camera (based on work conducted by visiting undergraduate Muskan Shinde) as well as a talk showing the first results from the mid-infrared ESO NEAR Experiment on the VLT.   The results are very promising, illustrating the power of mid-infrared imaging with adaptive optics.  Michael also got to meet former astronaut John Grunsfeld, who participated in a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.