Today was day one of the ASP 2009 Conference. The official kick off this morning came with an address detailing the progress of astronomy and science in general. It was amusing to see the gain in knowledge between the 40's and now, when the main context is that the space age had yet to dawn. Someone posed the question "what would our society be like if we never saw beyond our own sky?" He referenced a book about a world with 5 suns, that once every 2000 and some years 4 are on one side of the world and the 5th is eclipsed by the moon. The people see night for the first time. Douglas Adams wrote about the planet Cricket where the planet was nestled in a cloud of dust, blocking their view of space. When a space ship fell from the sky they fixed it up and went out to see where it came from. They saw the universe and immediately decided it must be eliminated... Not sure what my life would have been like without seeing stars. Less - it definitely would have been less.

I also attended an interesting session by the National Parks Service on conserving dark skies and how EPO can be done through the NPS. Now I want to be a park ranger. I'm seriously considering moving to Yosemite.

To round off the #nerdweek day 1 I got to listen to John Grunsfeld talk about the STS 125 mission. Very inspiring - now I want to be an astronaut too :)

Try searching #ASP and #ASP09 and #Nerdweek on twitter to find all the tweets from the meeting.