LISA at the 213th American Astronomical Society meeting

The 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society featured many talks and posters about LISA science and technology—and the new LISA booth (including a full-scale model of a LISA spacecraft) was a highlight of the exhibit area.

LISA science and technology was featured prominently at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Association in Long Beach, California, 4–8 January 2009.  The LISA Project unveiled a shining new booth, graced by a full-sized model of one of the three identical LISA spacecraft, provided by the Albert Einstein Institute of Golm, Germany. Many visitors had their photographs taken with the LISA spacecraft; they can be viewed and downloaded from the Flickr photoset.

In the Monday evening splinter session titled "What's gravity got to do with it?" Marta Volonteri, Brad Hansen, and Cole Miller battled it out, “Astrophysical Idol”-style, for the most entertaining talk on black-hole binaries. A jury of physics celebrities (John Peoples, David Silva, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, and Craig Hogan) provided appropriately pithy commentaries.  Cole Miller won (first prize was two LISA laser pointers), thanks in part to his creative illustration of three-body interactions by juggling tennis balls (and to some trash talking).  See pictures here.

Tuesday's poster session on "Gravitational-wave astronomy with LISA" included contributions by:

• Tom Prince and the LISA science team ("Observing the dark side of the Universe: the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna");

• Shane Larson and Ron Hellings ("Harmonic correlation for eccentric binaries In LISA gravitational wave observations"), by Ilya Mandel and Jon Gair ("Can we detect intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals with LISA?");

• Joan Centrella and colleagues ("Massive black hole mergers: can we see what LISA will hear?"); and

• Nate Bode and Sterl Phinney ("Observability of circumbinary disks following massive black hole mergers").   

Technology posters featured contributions by:

• Tuck Stebbins and Paul McNamara ("LISA Pathfinder");

• Martin Hewitson, Paul McNamara, and Jeff Livas ("LISA Pathfinder data analysis");
• Ke-Xun Sun ("Modular gravitational reference sensor for astrophysics and astronomy");

• Patrick Lu and colleagues ("Grating angular sensor for astronomical telescopes, LISA, and MGRS applications");

• Nick Leidecker and colleagues ("Optical shadow sensing for drag-free spacecraft control"); and

• Saps Buchman and colleagues ("UV LED space qualification").

LISA science was also highlighted in a special session on Wednesday titled "Broad spectrum of gravitational waves," where Michele Vallisneri spoke about "The excitement and challenge of low-frequency gravitational-wave detection."  Several posters were presented, including:

• Matt Benacquista and colleagues (“Models of compact binaries in our Galaxy”);

• Neil Cornish (“LISA Data Analysis”); and

• Kelly Holley-Bockelmann (“Intermediate-mass black-hole mergers as sources for LISA”).

Wednesday also saw a special session titled "Signatures of Super Massive Black Holes."  There, Scott Hughes talked about learning from massive–black-hole binary coalescence waveforms; Marta Volonteri about the properties of mergers; Jeremy Schnittman about their electromagnetic signatures; and Joan Centrella about modeling the flows around binaries.