Reporting from the Workshop on Ices, Oceans, and Fire

Pretty sexy title for a planetary science conference, isn't it? Workshop on Ices, Oceans, and Fire: Satellites of the Outer Solar System. I am sitting in a conference room in the beautiful historic Hotel Boulderado in Boulder, Colorado, waiting an inordinately long time for the A/V guys to figure out how to get the presenters' PowerPoint slides onto the projection screen. I'll be here for two and a half days of the three-day conference on the current state of science, and future directions, for the satellites of the outer solar system (mostly the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter). The conference schedule is absolutely packed, and I'm a bit anxious about how well I'll be able to cover things, because this is my first conference post-baby and I'm a bit out of practice. But I'll try!

Today the topics to be covered include the following (the links go to the conference program in PDF format):

• The Early Years: Origins and Early Evolution
• What Lies Below: Oceans and Interiors
• Heavens on Earth: Terrestrial Analogs
• Special Session on New Horizons at Jupiter
• and a potpourri of topics in the afternoon Poster Session.