Publications

The ASP reaches out with a wide variety of publications for
amateur and professional astronomers alike

Mercury Magazine – Setting itself up for an exciting new future

In the spring of 2023, Mercury Editor, Liz Kruesi, published a double issue packed with a variety of astronomy news, columns, and exciting feature articles. Our long-time, member-only magazine special features included the history of amateur astronomy clubs in the United States, as well as terrific advice to plan eclipse-watching events. The American Astronomy Society Solar Eclipse Task Force deemed the latter so important it requested we provide it freely to the public, which we did.

The majority of 2023 was spent preparing for a big change to Mercury, researching a new platform to feature not only a new look, but new content as well. Mercury Editor, Liz Kruesi, designed the newly evolved publication’s look and content and prepared it for its big reveal in December. 

Mercury is now a subscription-based magazine open to the entire community outside of ASP’s membership. It is now a responsive, adaptable, frequently updated website magazine.  It also offers content focusing on ways astronomy intersects with society, history, and culture setting it apart from the other popular-astronomy media like Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, and Space.com.

Publications of the ASP (PASP) and the Global Research Community

PASP—the technical journal of the ASP—publishes refereed manuscripts on astronomical research by scientists worldwide, in 2023 serving authors in 32 countries.

PASP continues to expand its impact by providing researchers with more seamless publication and article access. PASP’s publisher, the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), has negotiated an increasing number of agreements with global research institutes to make their work available to PASP on an open-access basis.  PASP has also expanded the number of articles that it publishes using an open-access model, allowing for immediate access by researchers all over the world. As open-publishing models become increasingly popular, PASP is excited about the prospect of making the research it publishes available to a wider audience.

Figure 1. A schematic illustration of the magnitude of the brightness differential between the Sun and a hot, young exo-Jupiter in the NIR and the Sun and a reflected light Jupiter in the optical. The brightness differential for a young Jupiter analog is ∼10−6, comparable to the brightness differential between a lighthouse and a firefly. Once a Jupiter-like planet has radiated most of the energy of formation and no longer glows brightly in the infrared, this differential drops to 10−9, akin to the brightness differential between a lighthouse and a single bioluminescent alga cell. 

From “An Introduction to High Contrast Differential Imaging of Exoplanets and Disks” by Kate Follette, 2023, PASP 135, 093001

ASP Conference Series for Professional Astronomers and Space Scientists

The ASP Conference Series (ASPCS) is happy to share our latest Monograph 9, Protostars and Planets VII, with the world. This impressive 1100-page volume is part of a reputable series containing a comprehensive overview of the fields of planet and star formation, including planetary compositions and structure, planetary atmospheres, molecular clouds, protostars, debris disks around young stars, and much more. 

We are also helping undergraduate research students learn how to communicate their results with publishing articles by undergraduate students and their mentors in a special open-access Compendium of Undergraduate Research in Astronomy and Space Science, Volume 525, 2023.