More Puerto Rico Incidentals

One thing I forgot to post is how noisy outside gets after dark. I'm told that it's because of the coqui, which are frogs that are native to Puerto Rico. At night, they start chirping, and you hear it everywhere. You can even hear it faintly from inside our room. They aren't much to look at, being a gray-brown in pictures and only about 1-2 inches long. I haven't seen one. I have seen little lizards on the path during the day, and Janet, who is a sociologist who studies scientists*, found a crab the size of her hand roaming around outside the room. Her room was closer to the waterfront, while I'm close to the pool and the conference center.

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I still haven't given you a science report, but I will -- I was kind of inactive yesterday after working off post-talk nerves, but I did get to Rings, Irregular Satellites and Icy Satellites so far, and some scattered Exoplanets talks. This afternoon is Origins of the Solar System from 2 til 5. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow. Also, expect photos and such -- on Saturday, I get to go to the World's Largest Telescope before coming home on Sunday.

Also, for those of you in Europe or up early in the morning on Friday (tomorrow), at 7:30 EDT, NASA will be dropping a used rocket onto the South Pole of the Moon to look for ice in the debris cloud. There will be a probe (LCROSS) watching it, then following it down, as well as Earth-based telescopes. I'm sure there will be streaming video on NASA's website. I'm going to watch it from the conference room here -- they've been making a big deal about it, and the registration gift was a mission patch. Which will be going on my jacket next to my Apollo 40th anniversary one. Perhaps I can find some more patches in the Arecibo gift shop.