Unfortunately, the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is in trouble due to a lack of funding and audio. (donation page at Astrosphere)

Right now, we are seeking the audio and funding needed to keep 365 Days of Astronomy going through December 2011. We seek commitments for 82 episodes and $5000 in funding. We would like our last episode to be December 31, 2011.

How we got here: When the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, came to an end, we decided to keep the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast going for two reasons: We had momentum and we knew the Year of the Solar System was coming. It was my (and I take the full blame here) belief that the Year of the Solar System would be able to carry much of the energy of IYA into the future, and that people passionate about our home star system would add their voices and donations to support 365 Days of Astronomy through this new celebration of space. This just didn’t happen though. Let’s face it, the economy sucks and many people are just tired. Finding the energy to donate time or money is hard when listening to the radio makes you want to hide under the bed.

Why we’re asking: At a certain level, it is hard to walk away from something feeling like it is halfway done. This is the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, and we’d like to complete the 2011 calendar year.

Can you help?
We want your audio! You can signup to produce an episode by emailing signup@365DaysofAstronomy.org

We need financial help. 365 Days of Astronomy is a product of Astrosphere New Media, a 501(c)3 non-profit. Your donations are tax-deductible in the US, and appreciated no matter where you come from. You can donate via paypal:

Please help?

UPDATED: You can also become a Sustaining Supporter of 365 Days of Astronomy  We have set up three ways to become a sustaining supporter of 365 Days of Astronomy. You can donate: $1 / week, $1 / day, or the equivalent of 5 Caffe Latte’s a week at Starbucks. All subscriptions are 5 months in duration.

Dollar a Week : $1.00USD – weekly Dollar a Day : $30.42USD – monthly Donate Coffee Money : $68.25USD – monthly

As some of you may know, Nick Rattenbury is leaving the Jodcast and the rest of the team (including the original Astronomy Blog author Stuart Lowe) are stupidly busy, soooooo Fraser Cain and I decided to help them out and adopt their show to make sure it keeps going.

The first episode of the new Jodcast, under the new branding of Astronomy Cast, is now available. Check it out on the Jodcast Website.

There are good times. For instance, in about three months this summer and fall Fraser Cain and I, with the help of undergraduate Rebecca Bemrose-Fetter and graduate student Georgia Bracey, managed to do a quick a solid study on who listens to Astronomy Cast and responds to surveys. The paper is already published and you can find it here. That was fun, challenging to analyze in a “I need a brain but not a Nobel prize” kind of way. That’s the type of low-hanging-fruit every researcher likes to pick and munch every now and again.

The research I worked on today, however, led me to question the logical nature of my field. Along with another student (whose name I’m not publishing without permission), I’m currently working on a follow-up project to my dissertation. Back in 2002, I noticed (and I’m not the only one to notice this) that there is a trend as a function of density in how galaxy clusters evolve. Basically, small groups of galaxies, like the one we live in, don’t really evolve that much over the course of the universe. Spiral galaxies stay spiral and violence like collisions and gravitational harassment just don’t happen that often. At the same time, really rich large clusters form first and very quickly and they whip their member galaxies into a frenzy of mutual destruction. Galaxies are quickly beaten into elliptical forms, star formation is cut off, and anything new that falls in is quickly destroyed.  It is the mid-sized systems that are most interesting. They start out filled with spirals, but as the millenniums tick by the spirals collide into one another, one by one, until today these systems are devoid of star formation and rich boring elliptical galaxies.

Observationally, we have specific ways to describe cluster density and the fraction of spiral to elliptical galaxies. Unfortunately, we have more than one way to do each of these things. This is where my personal frustration comes in. My student and I wanted to cull for the astronomy literature a large collection of published values and than look for a general trend. We were even prepared to solve for ways to convert from one way of determining galaxy density to another way. What we hadn’t expected is the utter lack of relationship we are finding in some cases. Let me see if I can explain at least one aspect of this problem.

Let’s take galaxy size and density. The most well known catalogue of galaxy clusters is probably the Abell Catalogue.  In his original 1958 paper, Abell described cluster richness using the number of galaxies “counted in a cluster that are not more than 2 mag. fainter than the third brightest member.” This method requires the counter to know where the edge of the galaxy is, and doesn’t work very well for large, diffuse systems that are difficult to sort out from background and foreground systems (think, Zwicky clusters). It also doesn’t work well for systems that are rich, but only have a few extraordinarily bright galaxies and scores of fainter systems.

Since that catalogue, people have been trying over and over to find a better way. For instance, Butcher and Oemler count galaxies “with projected distances from the cluster center less than R30, and with absolute visual magnitudes Mv <= -20″ where R30 “is the radius of the circle containing [30]% of the cluster’s projected galaxy distribution.” This system consistently counts the same type of galaxies, and while R30 isn’t perfect, it is better than trying to define the whole galaxy cluster.

Other methods also measure the number of galaxies brighter than certain cutoff magnitudes within a specific number of megaparsecs, or the number of galaxies within a specific number of megaparsecs of the cluster’s brightest galaxy or radio galaxy.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are as many ways of measuring cluster size as there are groups measuring cluster parameters. The radical differences in the systems means there isn’t even a direct way to convert from one system to another. This means that it just isn’t possible to look for detailed relationships using all the data that is out there without doing some serious reanalysis. What had looked like a nice easy literature review project to work on with a student grew into something that is requiring a lot of head scratching, and I’m afraid that to do the project right, we’ll need to use SDSS data, which makes this very much not a 1 semester project for an undergrad. So… we’re going to do what we can with all the published data that we can get on a mostly standard system (and it looks like we’ll be using Abell counts, as flawed as they are).

At least it’s not quite apples and oranges. I think I can safely call all our data citrus. Unfortunately, I think the clemintines got mixed in with the tangerines.

Image Credit: That ones all mine It’s a galaxy cluster I discovered as part of my dissertation research.

These random student questions can lead the class on wild rides (and I love rollercoasters). They give me a chance to answer a lot of questions involving space, astronomy, and spacecraft in my physics classes as we stray off topic into the realm of “what if?” There are also days when we get into discussions on all the ways you can destroy things, accelerate things, or (one of my favorite topics) design more frightening rollercoasters. This isn’t to say there aren’t also days when I say with a sigh, “I’m really sorry, but I need to at least get through some of [insert less interesting topic here] so you’ll get what you need out of the class.” Those days happen. There are also days when my students ask me questions I just can’t answer on topics like chemistry, particle physics, electronics (it’s all magic – when you see smoke, that’s the magic escaping), or even sometimes astronomy. I’ve learned that it’s okay to say, “Let me look it up,” or “email me so I can find someone who knows.” Students understand that we can’t know everything, and as long as I try and I’m honest, a good classroom dynamic seems to follow.

And I’m guessing I’m not the only teacher who has these days, and enjoys their students’ questions (even when they can’t answer them all). With Astronomy Cast, we’ve decided that we want to be a part of helping high school teachers  get their students questioning by putting ourselves out there as folks willing to answer questions.

And if you’re a school teacher, I’d love it if you’d email us so we can get you involved.

Here’s what’s going on: Inspired by the success of our “Questions Shows,” Astronomy Cast is creating a “Student Questions” series. These shows will answer a selection of student questions, emphasizing questions related to high-energy astrophysics, in 30-minute podcasts. High-energy astrophysics studies some of the most energetic and exotic objects in the Universe, including: supermassive black holes and their jets of charged particles, exploding stars, and city-sized neutron stars spinning thousands of times per second. Each show will eventually have an illustrated transcript, and questions will also be indexed online by topic. Submitted questions not used in shows will still be answered, but will only appear in the online index. To facilitate educators submitting audio questions, Astronomy Cast can provide recording devices that can be shipped on loan to schools at no cost to them (return postage provided). Teachers are also free to use any existing equipment their school has to send us audio. This program is sponsored by NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope Education and Public Outreach program.

Interested? To find out how to apply, download the front and back of this flier. If you’re a teacher, drop Astronomy Cast an email at info at astronomycast dot com, or email me at pamela at starstryder dot com. Also, feel free to give a copy of the front and back of that flier to your favorite teen’s high school teacher.

The more the merrier (and the more fun this podcast series will be). Get your kid(s) asking questions, and I’ll be here with Fraser, doing my best to get them answers.

(And tomorrow, I’ll talk about something more astronomical)

While I generally try to leave my personal life out of this blog, this one sentence description needs to be shared: My husband tried to replace a bathroom facet and managed to catch the wall on fire. I blog to you from the secondary story hallway floor outside the bathroom where I am sitting with a fire extinguisher (the pin is pulled). There is currently water coming out the ceiling of the kitchen below.

Really. I’m not kidding.

Ok. Now that I’ve got that out of my system… Dragon*Con. The wonderful Derek over at Skepticality arranged for me to be part of the podcasting track at Dragon*Con (and he also arranged for me to be on these week’s episode of his show – check it out ). I’ll be arriving at the Con mid-day Friday, and my schedule is as follows:

Friday, 10pm, Space & Science Track: Panel – Apollo hoax theories & other Astronomical Urban Legends (Forsythe – Hilton)
Saturday, 11am, Podcasting Track: Panel – Podcasting in the Classroom (Jackson / Carter – Hilton)
Saturday, 4pm, Podcasting Track: Astronomy Cast LIVE! with a very special guest (Jackson / Carter – Hilton)
Saturday, 7pm, Parsec Awards (Hyatt – Regency 5) Astronomy Cast is up in 2 categories!
Sunday, 10am, Space & Science Track: The Improbable Universe (Henry – Hilton)
Sunday, 8:30pm, Podcasting Track: Panel – PodSci Panel (Jackson / Carter – Hilton)

The complete Space & Science schedule is here and the complete podcasting track schedule is here.

In addition to the above, I also want to find at least one opportunity to where my random hominid alien costume. (Yes, pictures will be provided).

Monday, we’re (my husband is tagging along) leaving mid-day to  fly home. Then, Tuesday I’m going to the EPO meeting for more fun. At that meeting I’m part of the following:

Wednesday, all day: Poster – It Takes an e-Village (Cain, Gay, Foster, Plait)
Wednesday, 10:30-11:20am: Your Face(book) and MySpace: Let’s Hook Up (Gay, Foster)
Thursday, all day: Poster – Using New Media to reach Broad Audiences (IYA New Media Team)

There will also be all day meetings Friday and Saturday (after the meeting) for the International Year of Astronomy, which will include the unveiling of the new IYA website (designed by me )

So life is busy, but fun (ignoring the smoldering wood in my bathroom – which will hopefully stop smoldering soon. When this set of trips is over, I’ll get to settle into just teaching and podcasting for awhile while I replace the wall in my bathroom. I always wanted to learn how to install wainscoting …

And, just as I finished this, the fire alarm went off for the first time. I think I need to replace that (especially since I just used a broom to knock it off the ceiling in pieces to shut it up – 10ft ceilings have their drawbacks).

<small>may I scream now?</small>

On the research front, I have a date with AH Leo. This stubborn little RR Lyrae star has been refusing to reveal all the downbeats of its complex rhythms for several years. This star pulsates in a complex combination of radial and non-radial pulsations that are discussed in an article I wrote last year. Imagine a song with a driving 2/2 bass drum – Thump thump, Thump thump – that has layered on top of it a complex longer percussion lines – ratta tat tat ratta tatta tat tat ratta ta ta … . AH Leo is dancing to that complex beat, revealing its baseline easily, year after year, but never quite letting me see how that top line repeats.

Common wisdom says, “If at first you don’t succeed, find a bigger hammer.” Last year I went out a found the biggest variable star hammer I know of and hit AH Leo with it. The hammer was the AAVSO and its hordes of highly knowledgeable and skilled amateur astronomers. Last April a call went out – catch AH Leo’s light, record its every change. From across the globe amateur astronomers emerged armed with telescopes and CCDs, and (as weather, spouses, and other obligations allowed) they let no photon go unobserved. Over 4000 data points later, I have the data needed to get at the background oscillations of AH Leo, and thanks to the hard work of Marek Kozabul at Clay Center Observatory, I’m getting one final year’s data to confirm what is going on.

This brings us to the writing part of this entry. Writing blogs is a pleasure. Writing research papers and grants is not. On my ‘Spring Break to do list’ is the need to start writing up AH Leo, and also to start writing up grants for some side projects. To try and mediate the pain I will probably be writing at least one blog entry on tools for both research and grant finding/writing that minimize the pain.

And in the midst of my professional astronomer research and writing, I’m going to work on some recording. I want to get some of my talks turned into enhanced podcasts that I will post on this site. I also have a neat collaboration in the works between Astronomy Cast and an entity that has been a long time promoter of public astronomy education that I can’t wait to reveal. Part of what makes astronomy exciting to me is being able to communicate not just my research (which in the grand scheme of things isn’t the most exciting of stuff) as well as the research of the entire community to the public. My personal excitement about astronomy is fed by the excitement of others. I’m am driven by every letter from a reader/listener and every student who asks a question just out of curiosity. Their desire to know more, makes me want to find more answers and find better ways to communicate those answers.

The other day I was asked why I focus so much on astronomy education research, and I have to admit that I don’t see podcasting and astronomy education research as the same thing. Yes, people do learn about astronomy from Astronomy Cast. But, I also learn about middle-east politics from Time, and about home repairs from “This Old House.” Are people who write for Time doing research how to most effectively teach middle-east politics so people retain what they learn? Are the folks at “This Old House” doing research on best practices in evaluating what people learn about home repair? Maybe, but I’m betting their primary focus is on communicating content and finding the most effective ways to catch and keep their non-captive audiences. Astronomy Cast does educate. Fraser and I rely on the research others have done in using technology to communicate and how to most effectively convey astronomy. We are a content source, and if you are going to place us in a bin, I suspect that our bin would also contain Sky and Telescope, Bad Asttonomy, the Cosmos series, and a whole lot of popular astronomy content. Astronomy text books and astronomy classes, which all have activities for learners and evaluation components to test learning are in a different bin. I have the utmost respect for people doing astronomy education research, and it is because of that respect that I must say I am an astronomy educator, variable star researcher and astronomy communicator/journalist, but not an astronomy education researcher.

Now, if you want to ask me why I spend so much time popularizing astronomy through podcasting and writing, that I can answer. I do it because astronomy inspires people to question, to think, and to want to learn more about science. I want to live in an inspired, scientifically knowledgeable, and questioning society. Through popularizing astronomy I can help to build that future society I want to live in. Astronomy is a gateway drug to wanting to learn science, and I am a dealer standing on a digital street corner peddling cosmology, stellar evolution and planetary science. My little pages of content are free, but if you find yourself coming back, I just might start asking you to donate. Come learn. Go out and tell all your friends. Here, let me give you some links for you little siblings, and don’t forget – the more people who come and learn, the more I will be inspired to give.

This is a popularity contest. The more diggs we get, the more people will find out about Astronomy Cast. Thanks, Fraser and I really appreciate it.

My strongest memory from the last meeting was visiting the Icon Bar and Grill with a friend and Phil Plait’s old manager and, as a bi-gender group, checking out the cool decorations in both the male and female restrooms. Seriously – they are totally worth a special trip. I hope to visit there again and get pictures this time.

The AAS meeting is one of my favorite of the year. It is crowded, noisy, has too many people, and is always exhausting. I usually work myself into a caffeinated frenzy trying to keep up with both my science presentations and journalistic (or at least podcaster) coverage of the daily events. None of these things scream, “This is a fun experience.” But, in the midst of the frenetic activity are all the friends I only see at meetings, and in the press room I get to work side-by-side with some of the smartest writers I know, trying to figure out how to bring to the public the best and most interesting 1000+ astronomers have to offer.