Here's the pointer: 

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AAS/AASTeX

1. Download the large version with graphics AASTeX v5.2 gzipped tar file 
(TGZ) to your linux machine.
2. To unpackage do:  tar xvfz aastex52_large.tar.gz and this will create a 
sub-directory aastex52 with all the latex macros and some sample files.
3. If you have your own linux machine you can install them with "make" (while
logged in as root), otherwise you can simply use them by copying the files
to the working directory
4. The file sample.tex is a template preprint that demonstrates most of the
features of the latex macros (i.e. manuscript versus preprint mode, how
to insert tables and postscript figures, how references work with the
\citet and \citep options etc.)
5. If you run "latex sample" twice that will generate a sample.dvi file which 
you can view with xdvi.  You need to run latex twice in order to generate the
correct citations list -- so that LaTeX knows how to give a reference
to a citation, equation, or figure that appears later in the document.
6. Postscript and PDF.  To generate a printable postscript, after latexing 
type either 
1. "dvips -f sample > sample.ps", or
2. "dvips sample.dvi -o sample.tex", or 
3. "dvips sample -o" (which produces "sample.ps" by default). 
To generate PDF: 
either 
1. create PDF directly from DVI: 
  a. "dvipdf sample.dvi -o sample.pdf", or 
  b. "mkpdf sample" ... where "mkpdf" is available from John Dubinski at:
      http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/mkpdf. Save it as mkpdf and
      then do a chmod a+x mkpdf to make it executable.  After you latex,
      type "mkpdf sample" and it will produce a good looking PDF file.
or 2. make PDF from postscript: "ps2pdf sample.ps sample.pdf"