Last week-end (from thursday to sunday) I was in Paris for the Rencontres du Cel et de l'Espace at La Villette.

I saw Roving Mars at la Géode (the huge mirror bowl behind the La Villette Science City) on thursday. I knew what to expect so don't regret it at all.

During those meetings we meet friends, make new ones, meet others we've been posting in forums with but never saw before. But there's one conference after the other given by scientists, journalists, amateur astronomers. We try to see the most intersting ones (for me it might be different from a friend). Well known astronomy specialists are available to the public, selling their books, answering questions.
I met Laurent Laveder who produced this and saw Thierry Legault who made this.

While there, we learned about MGS problem and the picture of Saturn's south pole.

I also learned the reason why Planetary Nebulae a called that way was because they looked very much like Uranus when they first were discovered.

About the controversial definition of a planet, the third point: A planet is any object in orbit around the Sun that is dominant in its immediate neighborhood, André Brahic said this:
Dominant in its neighborhood means this celestial body will either force any other smaller body in the vicinity to smash against it, be expelled by it or force ot into its Lagrange point. It doesn't mean that all of this has already happened; it can still be going on.

Specifically about space, there was a little less than previous years. One theme about being above the blue sky and another about where the US is going (about the DOD budget and how the rest of the world will have no choice but take the US position into account).
Great 4 days and only 2 hours from home to Paris, thanks to the high speed train.