Objective
The Exoplanet Forum 2008 convened a meeting in Pasadena on May 29-30, 2008, and will be an ongoing activity, as follows:
- Draft community book.
- Report draft results to NASA HQ.
- Report at the AAS meeting in January 2008.
- Print Exoplanet Community Report in spring 2009.
- Distribute Report to Decadal Survey and community.
The Forum meeting in May continued our community effort to define a coherent, integrated program for exoplanet research and technology development in the coming decade. You can see the presentations at the Forum here. These presentations from the Forum will be captured in chapters in a book, tentatively titled Exoplanet Community Report which will have its first complete draft ready for a NASA HQ review in September. The Report will be updated and summarized at the AAS meeting in January, and printed and distributed to the Decadal Survey and the community in spring 2009.
The Forum meeting was organized around seven measurement techniques: astrometry, direct optical imaging, direct infrared imaging, exozodiacal disks, radial velocity, transits, and microlensing. An eighth, radio, was added recently. The Report of the Exoplanet Task Force (ExoPTF), published on 22 May 2008, showed that each technique makes important scientific contributions to this rich field of research, as reflected in the Forum meeting organization. The Forum builds on the ExoPTF Report by adding specific information on missions and technology development needed to implement the ExoPTF findings. In addition, the Astrophysics Strategic Mission Concept Studies (ASMCS) awards were made in spring 2008, with study results to be reported in spring 2009; interim ASMCS results will be included in the Forum book as they become available.
We invite you to become a new contributor to the ongoing Forum project, joining the current contributors.
Forum activities are sponsored by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. ExEP is part of the new organization of the Astrophysics Division. It includes the missions and activities of the former Navigator Program.
