Milky Way Project at AAS

Last week, the American Astronomical Society held the first of its big jamboree-style meetings of 2011 in Seattle. At these meetings, the great and the good of US astronomy gather and present their work, to each other and to the press – you may have noticed  the uptick of astronomy-related stories in the press. There was news on supermassive black holes, Milky Way satellites, first results from the flying telescope SOFIA,  distant protoclusters, a massive new Sloan Digital Sky Survey map and much, much more.

Several members of the Milky Way Project science team were also in attendance, and Rob Simpson presented a very nice poster on the progress of the project – I thought I’d share it here (via Slideshare – use the buttons below the image to enlarge, view full screen or share). Rob informs me that the numbers are already outdated, that we’ve now had around 12,000 volunteers draw bubbles. Great stuff!