Monsoon Workshop 2026

TBD

TBD

We are investigating options for a workshop dinner. Details to come.

TBD

TBD

LPL facilities can be available for discussions with CSS and community members outside of the two days of sessions. Please let us know what you are thinking!

Upload your presentations?

Speakers should ideally provide their presentations before the workshop in Powerpoint, PDF, or Keynote format. Email the files to rseaman@arizona.edu, to avoid the dreaded USB stick on game day.

You will present from your own laptop by logging into the workshop Zoom session (details to be provided later) and sharing your screen. The copy you upload will then be a backup should there be issues sharing.

We will make presentations and Zoom recordings available on this website after the workshop, unless you opt out.

All sessions will be held in room 308 of the Kuiper Space Sciences building on the campus of the University of Arizona. Enter from the south side of the building facing the UA Mall, take the stairs or elevator to the third floor, and proceed to the atrium on the north side of the building. See the Parking tab below, or take the free Tucson Streetcar, which has a stop just one block north.

Secondary group discussions can occur at the tables in the atrium, or in the smaller lecture hall next door if a projector is needed. There is also a lab space around the corner. Speak to somebody with a red lanyard for details.

It is perhaps not widely known that Tucson was the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy designated in the United States. ADASSx attendees are encouraged to explore the Old Pueblo's many creative restaurants, whether on the list below or not.

CSS will provide a mid-morning coffee buffet and an afternoon snack break between sessions. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the attendees' choice. Many restaurants are within walking distance of the conference venue or are just a few stops away along the free Streetcar line. For those in a hurry, several quick and inexpensive options are on the second and third floors of the SUMC, steps away from the ADASSx sessions. Restaurant hours vary seasonally, so please verify that your choice is open first.

Dining reachable by walking or Streetcar falls into five general zones.

1. On and near campus
   • Watch out for the AI-piloted robots. I, for one, welcome our new food delivery overlords!
   • Corks & Craft at the southwest corner of the "SUMC Canyon" (labeled "The Scoop" on the out-of-date map) may be the only place on campus to get carded. "Burgers, charcuterie, gourmet grilled cheese. Wine and local beers," according to Reddit.
   • Staying at Aloft? Try Miss Saigon or Trident Grill.
   • Couldn't reserve (or afford) a casita at the Arizona Inn? Have a cocktail on the Audubon Patio or hobnob with the plumed snowbirds in the Main Dining Room.
2. Main Gate
   • ADASS's opening Reception is upstairs at Gentle Ben's. If eating downstairs, we prefer sitting outside.
   • Illegal Pete's – eminently edible burritos. Try the potatoes in honor of Dan Quayle, who more recently saved the Republic. Probably best to sit upstairs at this one.
   • Frog and Firkin – "inventive variations on traditional English pub fare."
   • Many other diverse options that change faster than my personal lunch cadence.
   • Time Market is halfway between Main Gate and Fourth Avenue. The Third Avenue Streetcar stop is right outside.
     • or it's a 10-minute walk from the same Streetcar stop to Zemam's, Too, authentic Ethiopian dining.
3. Fourth Avenue
   • Magpies is a worthy contender in the never-ending pizza wars. Pesto? Yes, please!
   • The Shanty, "Arizona's Oldest Continuously Licensed Bar." There will be students.
   • The Hut tiki bar. If you've been to Tucson before, you may recognize the Moʻai relocated from a mini golf course across town.
     • If cultural appropriation gives you indigestion, select from many other options like the Boxyard or Bison Witches.
4. Downtown
   • Too many to single out, but Maynards is a favorite.
   • Chimichanga aficionados should make the pilgrimage to El Charro, where they were invented.
   • Borderlands Brewing Co. now has two locations and is the Tucson home for Astronomy on Tap (3rd Tuesdays).
   • The AC Hotel has the...wait for it... AC Lounge. It's near the Rialto Theatre.
     • The Black Jacket Symphony will perform "Hotel California" at the Rialto on Monday, November 6.
   • Or pair other downtown restaurants with other events.
     • For those on per diem, Metal Mondays at Club Congress are free.
5. Mercado San Agustin at the end of the Streetcar line
   • Agustin Kitchen is a nice place to dawdle, inside or out.
   • Judging from the line always waiting, Seis Kitchen must be good. Think about ordering online, perhaps from the Streetcar on the way.
   • At the Annex, we enjoy plant-based Beaut Burger.
     • Pair it with a plant-based beverage from Westbound.

If you or your friends have a rental vehicle or can split an Uber:

• The LOC hesitates to pick a Mexican restaurant. Willie Nelson and William Shatner like Mi Nidito in South Tucson.
• Heading north, brunch is a bust for conference-goers, but Prep & Pastry is the place if the morning Focus Demo left you in need of a Mimosa.
  • Try the patio at Blue Willow.
  • The POC dinner will be at the Union Public House at Saint Philip's Plaza. If you eat there before Wednesday, let us know how it was.
  • Keep going north, there are several options at La Encantada shopping center in the foothills. Frost Gelato for desert. This is also where to find the Apple Store.
• Heading east, Cielos has a pleasant patio at the Lodge on the Desert.
• Headed west, be a true rebel at Slice & Ice, which split off from the ubiquitous eegee's a few years back. Lime at one, lemon at the other.
• Wandering about in the middle, Feast has a new menu every month. Try the Halloumi grilled cheese. Open Tue-Sat. Next to SWS Computers.
  • Hankering for a chain restaurant? Never fear! Tucson's Culinary Dropout is in a converted lumber yard.
  • You won't have trouble finding a sports bar in Tucson, but devotees of the Church of the SubGenius might try Bob Dobbs.
  • Oh! Here's the other Borderlands across the street.
  • Relax at the Hop Shop with new friends and their old dogs.
    • Ciao Down Pizza delivers to your table, or fetch it yourself from the food truck du jour.
• Exploring the periphery, Google thinks a Holiday Inn Express is a "resorts and casinos near me". Maybe try Apple Maps.
• Virtual Seattle: Piroshky Piroshky comes to Tucson.

Please designate a driver as needed.

Hotels listed here are either adjacent to the University of Arizona Campus or lie along the Sunlink Streetcar line which will be running without charge throughout the meeting. There is a Streetcar stop steps from the ADASS meeting venue. Attendees with automobiles have a larger set of Tucson hotel and resort options with similar travel times. Parking ($16 per day) is adjacent to the ADASS venue (or cheaper parking is a short walk away). Street parking on campus (and some lots and garages) use a parking app, which you may want to install in advance.

It can be awkward to change hotels during a conference, but it may be worth checking availability and rates separately for the Rubin Community Workshop and ADASSx, especially the weekend. Buses are free in Tucson, and Ubers are competitively priced.

Map of some local Hotels

Lots to do in Tucson! We will be based at the University of Arizona's Scale Model Solar System. Head out the Main Gate past Neptune for various lunch and dinner options.

The Catalina Sky Survey Monsoon Workshop venue is on Venus (at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory). Elsewhere in the inner Solar System, an actual fragment of an asteroid is floating around the asteroid belt, the Flandrau Planetarium is for Martians, and the Moon Tree, a sycamore grown from a seed that flew on Apollo 14, lives by the model Earth and Moon.

Some places to check for time-varying events happening during your visit to Tucson are:

Tucson Weekly

University Calendar

Tucson Events

Pima County Calendar

The University of Arizona has adopted this statement:

• We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O'odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

The process of crafting the statement in consultation with leaders of the Tohono O'odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe was as important as its final form, and indeed, the work continues. Read more about this process from the University and from the O'odham, and visit the websites of the:

• Tohono O'odham Nation
• Pascua Yaqui Tribe

Many requirements of personal and professional good conduct apply to all attendees of scientific workshops, from the hosting institutions to the international scientific, astronomical, engineering, and software organizations we variously belong to:

• ADASS CODE OF CONDUCT (2022)
• UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ETHICS AND CONDUCT
• IAU Code of Conduct
• AAS CODE OF ETHICS
• SPIE CODE OF CONDUCT
• IEEE CODE OF CONDUCT
• ACM CODE OF ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT

If you see a problem with in-person or online behavior during ADASSx 2025, bring it to the attention of the organizers. We will be wearing the red lanyards. Or contact the POC Chair, Mike Fitzpatrick (mike.fitzpatrick@noirlab.edu) or LOC Chair, Rob Seaman (rseaman@arizona.edu).

There are several parking garages on the University of Arizona campus. Individually, the garages are straightforward to navigate. The entire parking system is complicated and uses at least four different payment models:

1. take a ticket on the way in and pay at the gate on the way out
2. take a ticket and snap a photo of the QR code with your phone to pay
3. use a cashier (rare)
4. install a parking app on your phone

The Cherry Street Garage is closest to the workshop venue at the Kuiper Space Sciences building. This uses the ticket with a QR code method.

Cost is generally $8.00 for all-day parking, with a complex heuristic ramping up to $16.00 if you lose your ticket. Press a button at the exit gate to talk to a human if needed.

The Sun Link Streetcar runs along 2nd Street and is free during ADASSx. Service is every 10-15 minutes until midnight on Friday and Saturday, until 10:00 pm on weekdays, and 20-30 minutes until 8:00 pm on Sundays. The nearest stop to the Kuiper Space Sciences building (#17) is one block directly north on the other side of NOIRLab. The nearest stop to the Friday evening reception (#14) is immediately next to the front door of Gentle Ben's. Other interesting destinations lie along 4th Avenue, and downtown Tucson, all the way to the end of the line at Mercado San Agustin.

The Monsoon Workshop Zoom link will be emailed shortly before the workshop.

Consult the agenda (TBD) all times Arizona Time (Arizona = UTC - 7 hours), for specific sessions and events of interest during daylight hours in Arizona, USA between August 1-5. Join the Zoom meeting at any point.

We will record all sessions. Individual speakers may opt out. Links to the recordings will be posted as the university's automated cloud processing allows.

These will be standard Zoom sessions. Please use familiar online etiquette:

• questions posted to the Zoom chat
• raise your (virtual) hand and be recognized before speaking
• mute when not speaking

The ADASSx venue has mics in the ceiling and even whispers may be audible to online participants. Please take conversations outside the room into the atrium.

ADASSx is an opportunity to be creative with your static photos, but also consider pointing your webcam at your pet snake or plug it (the camera, not the snake) into your telescope. ADASSx hopes to at least partially erase the barrier between in-person and online attendance at a hybrid meeting. A little effort from each of us may have disproportionate benefits. Examples of connecting virtual cameras to online content will be available for pinning in gallery view. This is easier to configure than it may seem, e.g., see https://obsproject.com.

Workin' on it.

University eduroam and the visitor and student/staff networks. TBD whether there will be a password for the named network, but the visitor network has the familiar daily registration process used on many campuses. The goal is that everybody will use the conference's named network, but you might verify in advance if eduroam is an option for your institution and create an account as a fallback. UAGuest should be a distant third as an option (perhaps fourth after your phone as a hotspot) and appears to work better for Windows laptops. YMMV.

Wifi on campus is generally quite solid. Eduroam tested at 80 Mbps up and down with zero packet loss compared to a bit faster student/staff wifi with ~1% packet loss, presumably from the hundreds of competing connections in the building at the time.

Please practice the various public health skills we have had to learn the last few years. If recent events are a guide, some will wear masks and others will not. (I will keep one handy in a pocket.) Please be considerate of other attendees' inclinations.

The meeting and banquet venues are large spaces that permit easy social distancing. The reception includes an outdoors patio. The campus has numerous outdoor locations for your personal and professional discussions if a particular space seems too confining. (The 14-day weather forecast is "sunny and warm".) Hand sanitizer remains ubiquitous on campus.

Consider the latest booster vaccine before you travel.

Some COVID-19 links:

• University of Arizona
• Arizona Health Service
• CDC
• WHO