So, I have to admit to being a bit remiss in blogging about the Universe series. I have a reasonably good reason: I like my husband. That may sound like a non sequitur, but you need to understand that after dating a long series of science and engineering types who all thought astronomy was great, I decided I needed to date someone who recognized astronomy could be cool, but just wasn’t all that into it. This change in strategy worked, and the first non-science and engineering doing, astronomy non-loving person I dated I ended up marrying. He is totally into blues guitars, works as a software guru doing work that in no way overlaps anything I use computers to do, and we are very happy. Unfortunately, since he really doesn’t care about astronomy, he really has no interest in watching “The Universe” with me. Robot Chicken just keeps winning over science. (Image credit: Don Davis / NASA)

So, I had to find a few hours when we weren’t both watching the TV together to try and watch “The Universe.” I hate to admit it, but the first spare hour I found, I totally fell asleep watching the episode “The End of the Earth” after doing a day’s hard yard work. Yesterday, I finally got around to watching two episodes, the end of the Earth episode as well as “Jupiter: The Giant Planet.”

Watching the shows in quick succession I had three thoughts: 1) It is always risky to talk about current events in things that are getting produced on either a magazine or television time scale, 2) if you are working on a small budget you can go a long long way using graphics available in press releases and from astronomy education materials, and 3) if you want to sell a television show, life finding or life killing science may be the best direction to go.