Press Release opportunity

[Stupendous Man <richmond@a188-l009.rit.edu>]

  Today, I received E-mail from the American Astronomical Society
regarding the poster I'll present at this summer's meeting.  They
suspect that the paper may be of interest to science writers 
attending the meeting, and so suggest that we might want to produce

                 An Illustrated Press Release

on the work.  

  Note that this is _not_ an opportunity to get up in front of
cameras and chat with reporters (as Tom did last year).  Instead,
we are being offered the chance to give the AAS PR people a stack
of flyers, which they may in turn pass on to reporters.  That's all.

  There are lots of guidelines for the press release and any 
associated illustrations --- I won't bore you with the details.

  Anyway, this is a good opportunity, I'd say.  I am going to be
working VERY hard on this once the academic quarter ends in two weeks,
and I am betting that I'll be able to produce a solid set of results
for the poster.  However, I really don't know what the American Public
would like to see; probably not a histogram of sigma(mag) vs. mag for
stars in some area of the sky :-)

  So, my question to fellow TASSians is, "What COULD we produce that
would be of interest to the press?"  

  Arne's very nice color picture of Orion is probably just the idea.
I can make prints of it.

  But can you think of other pictures or results that might be 
newsworthy?  As has been mentioned before, our main result will be
a long, thin strip, and that doesn't reproduce well in the media.
Are there some clever ways to make it more aesthetically pleasing?
Are there some areas of the sky which would make nice close-ups?
Perhaps some sort of graph might be better than a pretty picture?

  If you have some ideas, make them known.  After all, everyone reading
this is a member of "The Public", so if _you_ find it interesting, 
probably the rest of the world will, too.

  I'll do my best to produce hardcopies of the "Top Five TASS Results,"
or whatever we decide to call it.  If others out there can provide
expertise or materials or whatever, it would be great.

                                    Michael Richmond