Thanks to the support of the Graduate School of Geosciences, the doctoral students of the Space Physics group, Aljona Blöcker, Oliver Hartkon, Fabrizio Musacchio and Anne Schreiner, were able to join the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco from 12th to 19th of December, 2014. The AGU Fall Meeting is the largest international conference for Earth and space science with more than 24,000  attendees from all over the world. Through participating in this meeting, we gained insights about the latest science and enhanced our knowledge beyond our scientific field of interest.

Our Personal impressions of the conference:

Aljona - It was a great possibility for me to present my results to a large audience and to connect with colleagues, who also study the Jupiter's moon Europa. I presented my poster Magnetohydrodynamic Model of Europa's Interaction with Jupiter's Magnetosphere: Influence of Plumes in Europa's Atmosphere on the Plasma Environment. I attended several oral and poster presentations and talked to people who also worked on this subject, so I could extends my knowledge and gain new ideas for my work.

Oliver - The AGU fall meeting, 2014, was the first big international geophysical conference that I attended in my career. I presented my poster A Model of Callisto’s Ionosphere to several interested scientists from different research areas.  I discussed my results with researchers of Earth’s ionospheric science, of space plasma physics and of solar system research. I intensively talked to our colleague, Sven Simon, and one of his PhD students, who also works on the plasma environment of the Jupiter's moon, Callisto. All these discussions were very helpful for the ongoing improvement of my work. Moreover, I attended a lot of interesting talks. Some of them covered particular parts of my research field. Besides, I listened to talks about the ROSETTA mission and further interesting and recent topics of space and planetary science. Together with my colleagues I also enjoyed the unique atmosphere at the conference building located at the heart of the beautiful city San Francisco.

Fabrizio - The AGU Fall Meeting was a great opportunity for me to present my scientific results to a broader audience for the first time. I had the chance to present my poster Observations of Ganymede’s variable auroral ovals on leading side derived from HST/STIS in the session Moon-Plasma Interactions throughout the Solar System. Unlike in an oral presentation, a poster presentation has the great advantage of face-to-face interaction and I could explain my work to the audience (usually 1-3 listeners at the same time) in more detail.  I could completely concentrate on the dialogue and immediately respond to their questions. I had very good discussions about my work with other scientists, and I was able to gather inspiration for new ideas and concepts for my work. Overall, the conference provided me with a lot of impressions from excellent talks and posters, and I hope to be able to use them for my work.

Anne - I presented my current research on the dissipation process in solar wind 

turbulence in the Solar and Heliospheric physics poster session. I talked to different experts in solar wind turbulence science and discussed several issues of my recent research with them. For me, the most interesting talks besides the turbulence talks dealt with the latest results from the Rosetta/Philae mission, which achieved the first-ever soft landing on a comet in November 2014. Beyond science, San Francisco is a great city with open-minded people and a lot of interesting places for visitors.

We would all like to thank the GSGS for enabling us to participate in the conference.

Aljona Blöcker¹

PhD thesis: Magnetohydrodynamic Model of Europa's Interaction with Jupiter's Magnetosphere

Oliver Hartkorn¹

PhD thesis: Plasma Environmenst of Jupiter’s Moons Callisto and Ganymede

Fabrizio Musacchio¹

PhD thesis: The aurora of Ganymede: Analysis and modelling of Hubble Space Telescope observations

Anne Schreiner¹

 PhD thesis: Dissipation Range of Solar Wind Turbulence

¹PhD Student, Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology