Briefing: Astro Assortment

AAS Deputy Press Officer Larry Marschall, recently retired from Gettysburg College, officiated at Wednesday morning's press conference featuring a smorgasbord of discoveries ranging from nearby planets to remote galaxies. Curtis N. DeWitt (University of California, Davis) unveiled first-light observations from SOFIA's Echelon-Cross-Echelle Spectrograph (EXES). Brian J. Williams (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) described a Type Ia supernova remnant that might be the Kepler supernova's older cousin. Philip F. Hopkins (Caltech) described evidence that stellar feedback explains inefficient star formation in galaxies. Finally, Zehra Cemile Marsan (Tufts University) presented the first spectroscopic confirmation of a monster galaxy at redshift 3.3.