Meeting Day 2: Everything's more than good

Panorama -- garden in the morning

The meeting moved into the second day and I'm feeling even better with how the things go. When there is a will, there is a way! I'm feeling rather lucky.

Again I got up at 6 a.m. in the morning for the sunrise, unfortunately it was slightly foggy in the morning to eliminate the possbility of a beautiful sunrise. So I went to the restraut for breakfast (everything went smooth as I was familiar with the procedure this time), then got prepared for the morning session.

The morning session was about the annoucement of awards and prizes in the field of planetary science and invited lectures for the recipients. I was adviced to attend the lectures, so although the titles were not yet specific, I still arrived early. The first lecture was the Urey Prize recipient, Dr. Sarah Stewart from Harvard University, presenting her work about the theory of icy body impacts. Then came the next, Dr. (Prof.?) Tobias Owen for the well-known prize, Kuiper Prize. This prize is the top prize in planetary science, and Dr. Owen must be a well-known and respected scientist, because when the annoucement was made, all the attendees stood up to show their respects for him. Woo, really cool.

Panorama -- Prize annoucement

And then the annoucement confirmed my guess, Dr. Owen was indeed a spectacular person in the field. He was said to be the father of Cassini Project -- the spacecraft that is now exploring Saturn. This reminded me something -- it was, actually, 12 years ago, I was 9 years old and had watched the news about the launch of Cassini, then keep track with it, and wondered what I would be doing in 2004 (the expect arrival time of Cassini to Saturn). After 12 years, I'm now sitting at this top-class planetery science conference, meet spectacular persons in the field, including the Cassini-related people. Everything is fantastic.

During the noon I managed to figure out the explanation of the Coriolis issue on the unusual trajetory of 2008 TC3 and sent an email to Dr. Jenniskens about this, really excited to be able to answer a question given by the big-names -- even the later discovery of being failed on getting the regular scholarship this year cannot eclipse my happiness. In the afternoon it was the comet's session, but I had a great discussion about 1998 CS1 with Alan Harris et al at the exhibition hall and was too excited to go to the talk's. At the end of the discussion they invited me to the lunch on the next day -- wow this is great!

Okay tomorrow will be a big day for me. Don't forget my presentation on the poster in the afternoon -- you are warmly welcome to Puerto Rico and have a look at it

Panoaroma -- El Conquistador in the afternoon