The last couple meetings I’ve been at, I’ve found myself tweeting and not blogging. Now, with Google+ a new option exists and I’m going to try an experiment. In the mo+ment, I’m going to work writing short stories on Google+ and then link them to this post.

Here are the things I’m going to try and follow. I’ll add links as I attend them.

You can follow me directly on Google+ at http://gplus.to/starstryder

(All times are GMT-6 / Central time)

Monday

9:30 a.m.: THROUGH A LENS DARKLY 
Mapping Dark Matter with the CFHT Lensing Survey
Ludovic Van Waerbeke (Univ. of British Columbia) & Catherine Heymans (Univ. of Edinburgh)
My Notes On Google+ * Press Release * Related Awesome Simulation

A New Probe of the Distribution of Dark Matter in Galaxies
Sukanya Chakrabarti (Florida Atlantic Univ.)
My Notes on Google+ * Paper on arXiv

11:45 a.m.: HOW TO BUILD A MILKY WAY 
New Insights on our Galaxy from SDSS-III SEGUE
Constance M. Rockosi (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz)
My notes on Google+ * Press Release

APOGEE: SDSS-III’s Other Milky Way Experiment
Steven R. Majewski (Univ. of Virginia)
My notes on Google+ * Press Release

2:00pm: Astronomy Cast Records live!
Topic: How we know how old things are

Tuesday

10:00 a.m.: GALAXY CLUSTERS ACROSS THE COSMOS 
The Most Massive Known Galaxy Cluster at High Redshift
John Patrick Hughes (Rutgers Univ.)
My Notes on Google+ *  no online press release

A Protocluster Candidate at Redshift z~8
Michele Trenti (Univ. of Colorado)
My notes on Google+ * Press Release

A Galaxy Cluster Merger in Unexplored Phase-Space
William Dawson (Univ. of California, Davis)
My notes on Google+ *  Paper on arXiv

2:30 p.m.: AN INFRARED EXTRAVAGANZA
A Herschel Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
Margaret Meixner (Space Telescope Science Institute)

The Cygnus-X Spitzer Legacy Survey
Joseph L. Hora (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

WISE and the Evolution of Massive Star-Forming Regions
Xavier Koenig (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

SOFIA: Science at 41,000 Feet
Erick T. Young (Universities Space Research Association)

Got sucked into web updates.

More to come I hope!

Looking around the room, I see PhD astronomers, journalists, educators, amateur astronomers, and business managers, all involved in making people look up and learn. That we are all here – let to travel by our departments and funded through our grants and institutions – is a demonstration that times are changing and what we are doing is valued at some level.

When I was a graduate student, in the 6.5 years I was in Texas, two different astronomy education researchers come and give colloquium talks. On a third occasion, three of us in the department gave a talk. In all three instances, people came out of the woodwork (or at least up from the physics department) to heckle the speakers, making it clear they didn’t think statistical results from education research could be valid because they always knew some example that was an exception to the average. This was horrible logic. According to their logic, I can say that the average 1st grader (6 year old) can’t do algebra based on research, but because I know one first graders who can do algebra, all my research is invalid. This is horrible logic! But, when your goal is to invalidate someone, logic doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be good enough to caste doubt in an audience. And that’s what these people wanted to do – discredit and side line astronomy education research (heck, even Sagan was mocked for spending time communication astronomy).

This sidelining of education and communication conveys a horrible message: It tells young scientists with a passion and an ability to communicate and/or teach that they are wasting their time when they do anything other than research on astronomical objects. I’ve heard it said, those who can’t do research teach.

The only way I know to change this attitude is to raise the professionalism of our field. We need to demonstrate that communicating astronomy online isn’t just playing online. We need to demonstrate that teaching based on educational theory and prepared interactive class plans actually has a better impact than the traditional lecture from notes (I remember being told to keep all my college notes because they would form the core of my future lecture teaching notes). At the end of the day, we as a field of astronomy educators and communicators have to demonstrate that what we learn from our work matters and that we are changing lives.

This is what I do. When I first started podcasting back in 2005, I dealt with a lot of “Your wasting your time” comments. And I heard a lot of “Having fun playing online?” comments. Since then, I’ve been working one paper at a time to show that while yes, I am playing online, what I’m doing matters. And I’m just one of many people working to do this. In recent years, two new journals, the Astronomy Education Review journal, and the Communicating Astronomy to the Public journal, have been created for the group of us working to demonstrate the results of our work. Yes, I’m a trained variable star astronomer and galaxy researcher (and I’ve promised myself to publish papers on each this year to clean out my data backload). But while I’m a astronomy object researcher, I’m also working to become an astronomy communications researcher.

As the population of us doing this work has been growing and gaining momentum, we’ve been taking on larger and larger projects, from becoming the voices for space missions (or twitter feeds), to recruiting and training citizen scientists, to all the things in Caroline Odman’s talk (which will go online soon and get linked to here), we are doing more and studying the impact of everything we do as we go.

In someways, the International Year of Astronomy was our two new fields’ opportunity to shine. We were given a chance to go out and play with the entire planet and make a difference, and this week we are reporting back about our successes, and we are planning how to make the best of what we’ve done last beyond 2010.

I have to admit, I have been too jet lagged to keep up with the numbers and graphs that have gone flying past. All the talks from this meeting will go online (including my jet lagged talk). Rather then do a poor job summarizing things here, I’d encourage you to look at the twitter messages under hash tag #CAP2010 and watch for the results to be posted. Read the journals. Get things first hand.

I know a lot of science communicators – journalists, amateur observers, spacetweeps, teachers, and others – read this blog. You too are part of changing this field. The journals I named above to not require a PhD to publish results. As we build our new field, I would challenge all of you to evaluate what you do, track outcomes, learn what triggers people going from passively paying attention to astronomy that randomly appears in front of them (go go guerrilla sidewalk astronomers) to actively seeking astronomy content (and maybe even becoming sidewalk astronomers themselves).

Be part of the dialogue. Together, we are astronomers.

Galileo Painted on Ceiling of "Aula Magna of Palazzo Bo"

Sometimes it takes a bit longer than planned to get around to writing than expected. The second day of the IYA Closing ceremonies was filled with talks on history & vision – Who was Galileo and what was the real relationship between him and the Chrutch? How do we move forward to celebrate astronomy in years that aren’t 400 year anniversaries? How do we build on what we’ve done so that great new projects aren’t lost? And where does science go tomorrow?- Presented talks included talks from politicians, historians, and scientists.

Want to see what we saw? Full video coverage is available here.

In the past 400 years since Galileo turned a telescope toward the sky and reported what he was seeing, the technology has come a long ways. From hand ground lenses smaller than a palm that couldn’t quite resolve Saturns rings to 10 meter mirrors that allow us to see galaxies forming at the edge of the visible universe, we have not only grown our understanding, but we have also grown the universe.

Prior to Galileo and Kepler moving the Sun definitively to the center of solar system, the Earth-centered universe had been a tiny place, with all the stars hanging out where today we place the Kuiper-Belt. If we pretend they accurately knew distances back then (and they didn’t) the entire universe would have been ~ 0.0005 light years in diameter! Today we know the visible parts of the universe (which are probably less than 5% the size of the total universe!) are 93 billion light years in radius! That means the size of universe people learn in books (or on tablets), thanks to the telescope, has grown by a factor of a hundred-thousand billion! It’s not quite billions and billions, but still…

Along with growing the known size of the universe, the telescope has also populated the universe with objects that have forever been more fantastic than anything imagined in science fiction. From the discovery of galaxies, to black holes, to gamma ray bursts, at every turn and with every new technology the universe becomes more fantastic.

In someways, to me the most reusable legacy of the IYA is one simple phrase, “The Universe: Yours to discover.”

It is a true statement, and it is challenge. In the past couple years, thanks to citizen science, the world has seen comets discovered leaving their mark on Jupiter, new stars emerging from their home nebulae, and even entirely new classes of galaxies. Even today, in our world of giant telescopes and supercomputing, you – working from your sofa or your drive way – are capable of making tomorrow’s great new discovery.

The 2009 International Year of Astronomy is over. Long last the Beyond the International Year of Astronomy.

Invited Talks are scheduled for following dates and times (pending confirmation with all speakers!). You are invited to attend all events on the Astronomy Cast Public Events UStream Channel. Please feel free to embed this channel on your own webpage!

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 8:00 a.m. Van Biesbroeck Prize and Welcoming Address
  • 8:30 p.m. Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
  • 11:40 p.m. Russell Lectureship: RR Lyrae Atmospheres: Wrinkles Old and New
  • 3:40 p.m. Pierce Prize: Finding Utility in the Diverse Origins of Gamma-Ray Bursts
  • 4:30 p.m. LeRoy Doggett Prize: History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 6:30 p.m.  Gemant Prize: Science as Performance Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 12:30 p.m. Policy Talk: Charles Bolden
  • 3:40 p.m. Warner Prize: The Demographics of Exoplanets
  • 4:30 p.m. Galaxy Clusters and Black Holes: Cooling Versus Heating

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 8:30 a.m. Invited Talk: John Grunsfeld, Shuttle Atlantis Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 11:40 a.m. Heinemann Prize: The High-redshift Galaxy Jigsaw Puzzle
  • 3:40 p.m. Cannon Award: A Holistic View of Catastrophic Cosmic Explosions
  • 4:30 p.m. Rossi Prize: Strong Gravity and the Masses of Stellar Black Holes

• Thurs. Jan. 7
  • 11:40 a.m. Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies
  • 3:40 a.m. Reionization to Near Earth Objects: Scientific Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope

Real Science by Real People all from your keyboard

Here at dotAstronomy, each day of the conference is dedicated to a different topic: Citizen Science, Web-based Research, Visualization, and Outreach. Each topic is tangled with new media and web 2.0 technologies, and by the end of the week we hope to have made the web a little bit richer to explore.

Here on day 1, we’re starting in on what is perhaps the most overarching theme: Citizen Science. At its most fundamental level, citizen science is the act of every day people making contributions to science that produce a new understanding of the topic at hand: this is real research by real people. In astronomy, variable star observations are perhaps the oldest form of citizen science. For almost 100 years the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) has worked to organize amateur astronomers to make scientifically needed measurements of everything variable, with targets varying from supernovae to eclipsing binary stars. Over the years, amateur astronomers have added to their target lists gravitational lenses, transits of exoplanets, and measurements of the flickering of active galaxies.

As amateur astronomers have taken on more and more advanced science topics, the needed equipment has grown from requiring just a pair of eyes to often (but not always!) needing a personal 16-inch telescope with a full suite of filters and digital detectors. While I am forever amazed by the personal observatories these leisure time astronomers have built (amateur is the wrong word – they have professional skills and equipment), I recognize that the digitization of astronomy data acquisition is making it harder and harder for everyday people to get involved – the cost barrier and space barrier are just too high. This is where the internet can provide solutions. For those who have an observational bent, the Global Rent-A-Scope (GRAS) provides a low cost option.

The internet also opens doors to new ways for people to contribute beyond observing. There are now a whole range of possible ways to participate, including (but not limited to) data mining and data analysis.

Here at dotastronomy, where some of us are better known by our usernames than our real-world faces, we’re focusing on these internet based ways of doing citizen science.

Our first talk of the day is by Gijs Verdoes (Kapteyn Institute), from the Astro-WISE project. This is what I would call a data mining facility, but that description is perhaps far too narrow. The Astro-WISE system provides its users ways to access both final (reduced) and raw images from a variety of sky surveys and then gives users a suite of data processing and collaboration tools. Astro-WISE also allows users to build workflows using their own or already existing algorithms that facilitates the testing of ideas that can then easily be tried and then broadly applied using recorded (and sharable!) scripts. This is a scalable system using grid computing. It is all built on python, and one of the really neat side comments coming out of this talk is that today astronomers seem to streaming away from classic data reduction languages, such as IDL, to adopt python as their data reduction language of choice. If you are interested in learning how more about Astro-WISE, I encourage you to go out and explore their guided tour.

From Astro-WISE, a project designed for professional (paid) astronomers that also facilities public astronomy, we’ve moved on to Rob Hollow and Pulse@Parkes, a project designed to get kids doing observing for/with professional scientists (@pulseatparkes on twitter). This very straightforward project that uses a few hours of telescope time on the Parkes radio telescope each month to take needed observations of pulsars where the telescope is remotely controlled by school children. Helping the kids are a variety of scientists and educators who are with them every step of the way, working both face to face with them in the remote control room and via skype from the observatory. One of the early concerns in this project was that kids would get lost in the Parkes control system, and it was suggested that perhaps a special kids control system would be needed. The thing is, kids are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. Today, the Pulse@Parkes program has the kids doing everything the pros do using the same software in the same way and this is one of the small things that make the kids most proud. While this program primarily works with Australian schools, there are American schools who have taken part. Are you a teacher? Do you want to see how to get involved? All the info you need to be a part of this can be found here.

From data mining and data acquisition (and via a coffee break), we’ve moved onto Galaxy Zoo. I know I’ve talked a lot about Galaxy Zoo here, but there are a few new things you should all go check out. Specifically, there is a new Zoo. Often referred to as “Merger Zoo” the officially named Galaxy Zoo: Understanding Cosmic Mergers project. Each day a new merger is sent out to the users and we ask everyone to try and help us model what is going on. Have you merged a galaxy today?

With the morning sessions wrapping up, we’re getting ready for an Unconference afternoon. I think I might just go learn python…

Typing. Is there any other occupation? (from Sci-fi Laura)

This year I’ve flown nearly ninety-thousand miles as I’ve chased conferences and collaboration meetings and colleagues around the globe. Today I’m a quarter turn away from yesterday, transported from Edwardsville, Illinois, USA to Leiden, Holland, the Netherlands. My passport, unused until March of 2008, now only has 2 pages left. It will be replaced in April, but it has two more trips to go: Italy for the IYA closing ceremony and than South Africa to discuss the future at the Communicating Astronomy to the Public meeting.

For now though, I am in Leiden, in my hotel room just sitting for a moment, stealing a moment to write before I’m swept away by activity.

I’m here to attend the dotAstronomy meeting. This is a conference I’ve been looking forward to for an entire year. This is someplace I know I’ll learn new things (I don’t get to always do that), and where I know I’ll hang out with people going through the same funding nightmares I’m experiencing (not good, but misery loves company?), and in general this is a place where I’m among peers who I adore and respect and with whom I expect to build great things.

That is perhaps the coolest thing of all about this little 1 week meeting: we have a goal. This week, somehow, we’re going to try and turn out a citizen science project. We’re going to combine our science know-how, our tech know-how, and our communications know-how, and together we’re going to dream and build and the hopefully invite you to be a part of it all.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be posting the UStream for the conference, and you can follow all the activity through the hashtag #dotastro on twitter.

Come, be a part of this, and help us build something new.

(If only all conferences where this cool…)

Many Faces of NASA

It is with great hope that I blog this town hall meeting. Tonight the new EP/O Lead for NASA, Steph Stockman (geosteph on twitter), is presenting NASA Education and the new vision for NASA’s new future under Charles Bolden.

As some of you know, for the past several years I have one conference after another blogged with a certain degree of bitterness the mistreatment of education and astronomy at the hands of Michael Griffin. I’ve reported name calling and budget slashing. I’ve even watched graduate students tell him “You’ve budget slashed my dreams into oblivion” to have him respond with more name calling. It has been ugly.

But there is hope! Bolden respects teachers! (His parents I think were teachers.) And the new EP/O director is savvy to new media, literate in K-12 educational theory, practiced in informal ed and generally is an educational triple-treat. These are good things!

Anyway – Steph is talking She is starting her talk by explaining why we see NASA doing the things it does – the changes in vision, the changes in reporting, the random NASA stuff we all have to track. She is giving us transparency in government one annoying reality at a time – but it’s better to be annoyed by reality then by mysteries.

The new Space Mission Directorate Outcomes will include 10 areas of effort (slid flew by too fast to grab what those 10 areas are) that will address 4 areas of education (higher ed, K-12, informal ed, and outreach). Within this context, outreach is seen as something that directly connects many aspects of NASA public affairs with formal education. (Outreach is what I do.)

Funding will come out through a variety of projects, ranging from mission-based EPO (Like the Little SDO videos), major activities (this is what we’re doing with Galaxy Zoo), and even supplements to science grants (Got science? I’d love to talk to you about ed!)

Bringing us all together are a set of NASA education forums under themes such as Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Helioscience, etc. (My grant straddles Planetary and Astrophysics.) The forums are a really cool thing – They foster collaborations, sharing of resources, and generally supply a support mechanism for those of us with NASA grants. For the past couple months I’ve attended the monthly Planetary Science telecon and learned about a lot of lunar projects I never knew about that I can plug into and about get help for an upcoming Moon related open-secret-project I can’t write about here.

NASA is also using working groups to help define what NASA can do to best support us through their products and activities. These working groups (~10 people each), will consist ~50% of people working on NASA EPO (SEPOF teams in NASA speak) and the other 50% will be outsiders (for instance people from government) who can bring in a fresh perspective. On the list I am happy to see a Web Presence and Social Media Working Group! As part of all of this, they are going to make a user friendly NASA Science Mission Directorate EP/O web-portal, and they are going to make it possible to find NASA educational products in a straight-forward way. One of the more controversial parts of this (but one I support) is they are going to put all NASA products through a review process to make sure they are good products that we really should be promoting. When this first gets implemented, all existing products that haven’t been reviewed will get yanked until everything can go through the review process.

Yeah for accountability!

And all of the sudden we’ve landed in Q&A.

Q: How do we marry Project 2061 and NASA products?
A: (This is a really bad paraphrase) With meta-data. This is part of the review process – we’re going to make sure what we produce is aligned with standards and fits within the vision.

Q: What about assessment?
A: Over the years, standards have changed. Summative; Summative + Formative; Just Fromative. Etc. In the future, an evaluation/assessment professional needs to come to NASA HQ to help understand proper assessment. In the future, anyone doing assessment will need to have approval for their survey / instrument.

Q: Does this mean you are now your own Institutional Review Board?
A: Yes & No. It’s unclear. … Look, currently everyone is kind of doing their own thing. Likard scales from 1-5, inverse, 1-10, and all sorts of things. We need to try and sort this out into something more consistent.

At this stage, the Q&A deteriorated into a discussion on what it will take to get all NASA products and websites 508 compliant. I’m going to stop here and just be happy for clarity and transparency and hope.

Steam Punk Boba Fett

Last week I had the opportunity to go to Dragon*Con, where I slept too little and ran real hard. It was good, but I have to admit it is all a blur of images and emotions. When I try to think of those 4 days in Atlanta, my brain responds with flickering fragments of moments.

I’ve posted many of my pictures on flickr. Others are doing the same. I’m sure the story is documented (perhaps too well), and if you have images, can you please share links through the comments?

Fragments:

Masala Skeptic and I at "A Full Moon for Cancer"

• A Full Moon for Cancer: On the Thursday night prior to D*C, Phil Plait and I took part in a charity star party to raise money for the American Cancer Society. This event was in memory of Jeff Medkeff, the Blue Collar Scientist. Jeff was a blogger and amateur astronomer I had only known through the internet, but whom I respected at a distance for his work. He died last August of cancer, leaving behind a legacy of asteroid discoveries and of amateur astronomers trained to be better at their craft thanks to his efforts. Over the past year I’ve gotten to know one of Jeff’s friends, Mark, fairly well, and I was honored to get to read Mark’s words to the gathered crowd. What Mark wrote was honest, and from the heart, and they were beautiful.
• Costume Search: Thinking I was being smart, I bought a costume at CONvergence from a dealer who was at D*C. This way I would only need to carry it home from D*C. There was only one flaw in my logic: I never asked her what booth she would be selling in at D*C! One hour of searching and 4 vender rooms later I found her tucked in a corner with her beautiful handmade puppets, my costume hidden behind curtains. The costume fit perfectly, but has a mysterious french bustle I still haven’t figured out.
• A moment of Hair: I have never been one to confine hair dye to a “found in nature” palette of colors. I like reds and oranges and have pushed into maroon and purple on forays of hair exploration. Dragon*Con is one of the few places hair color is consistently not mocked. Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to dye my hair prior to departure (nor was I sure I wanted to have weird hair for a charity). Luckily, Carrie Iwan came to my hair’s rescue. In an evening of conversation and coloring, a group of us talked, laughed and dyed (for me it was red and black highlights). While the hair dye was fabulous, what makes it memorable was the sitting around with friends (new and old) and being intelligent, feeling individuals. Late night talks are good, and this trip was filled with them.
• The Parsecs: Saturday night was insane. I was booked to run madly from a talk on the Big Bang (which was to a packed room!), to a panel I was MC’ing that contained friends Phil Plait and Seth Shostak, to the Parsecs where I was giving out two awards and a couple of Galileoscopes as door prizes. It was Run, Run, Run. Literally. To get from the panel with Phil and Seth to the Parsecs I had to scramble from the basement of the Hilton to its second floor, across the sky bridge, across the Marriott, up two escalators, across another bridge, thru the food court, across the Hyatt lobby, and into the basement. (Somehow I went up 4 flights to go down only 1, to both end and begin in basements). I arrived at the Parsecs the moment the categories I was to announce were called, and as I dashed onto the stage, I was told by John Cmar, “BTW – you one a Parsec earlier!”. Ummmmm – WOW. The thing is, it wasn’t really me who won it, but rather it was a collaboration of literally 100s. This Parsec, in the category of “Best Infotainment” went out to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, a community project born out of the International Year of Astronomy. I was blown away, but managed to give away the Galileoscopes and announce the winners in two fiction podcast categories without hyperventilating on stage. It was a fabulous night that ended in celebratory drinking (and eventually midnight diner food) with friends.
• May I have your autograph please?:
  

  Felicia Day and a Galileoscope!

  If you know me, you know I have no qualms making a fool of myself in the name of promoting IYA and astronomy. For me, I will stare shyly from a distance at the actors of my favorite shows. For IYA, I’ll march right up and ask if I can have their photo with a Galileoscope. Thanks to an intro from Phil Plait, I actually got to walk up to New Media master and actress Felicia Day (of The Guild, Dr Horrible, and now Dollhouse) to get a Galileoscope celebrity pict. She did me one better than a photo though – she signed the box for charity. This gave Phil and me an idea. Our friend Kevin Grazier is science advisor for Battlestar Galactica (and other shows). We asked him if he could help get BSG actors to sign our box. Thanks to Kevin I got to talk astronomy with these actors and get their signatures on a Galileoscope box. The best part was, Michael Hogan (the XO on the newest BSG version) had heard of the Galileoscope! The box (containing a telescope!) will be auctioned for charity as soon as I get an eBay page set up. Stay Tuned!
• Of Singing Tesla Coils and Friends: The last full day of the Con played host to the Mad Scientist Ball. This was my third time trying to attend and the first time I succeeded in making it in before the fire marshalls blocked the entrance. The high light of the night is the Singing Tesla Coils. I won’t try and explain. Just watch the video below and imagine a 1-hour set. Afterward, I spent the evening with the podcasting and science crew, better getting to know Mur Lafferty (whose button for “I should be writing” from two years ago is a constant reminder on my board), Laura from JWST, who is maturing from a shy speaker into a skilled science communicator one Con at a time, and Laura’s husband and Parsec MC John Cmar. Between us we ranged topics and we talked late into the night.
  
• The day of lost things: Faced with too little sleep, Monday hit me like a wall. Having a bad email day didn’t help. I got up for a 10am recording of Brazilianisms, raced back to my room to pack only to get a text that I was supposed to be on a panel on being a women in science (YIKES – they left it off my official schedule), to race back to actually finish packing, to trying to pack up the IYA booth (and realizing I can’t carry box + sign + hat, and resorting to only carrying box), to trying to FedEx a box, to failing to FedEx due to Labor Day, to giving a talk, to racing off to be interviewed, to racing to plane, to realizing my hat and sign were still at the booth in Atlanta, to sleeping. UGH it was a long ugly, racing day. I don’t think I said good bye to anyone as I dashed to Marta with my box and my bags and a heavy inbox.

But now I’m on the road again, 3000 miles away in San Francisco. It is another day, and yet another city. Strangely, my hotel room – another Starwood hotel – looks absolutely identical.

Dragon*Con was fabulous. But it is over. And some of my dearest Con friends I didn’t get to spend time with at all. To fast it flew. But next year, I will say yes less and breath more as I speed walk instead of spring from Friday to Monday. Dragon*Con 2010, I will be with you.

And I’d like to leave you with one final video from D*C 2007 that just makes me laugh.
]]> http://www.starstryder.com/2009/09/14/dragoncon-retrospective/feed/ 7 http://www.starstryder.com/2009/09/13/see-you-in-san-francisco-at-asp/ http://www.starstryder.com/2009/09/13/see-you-in-san-francisco-at-asp/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:33:46 +0000 pamela http://www.starstryder.com/?p=1088

Somewhere over America

Another day and yet another plane. This time I’m on my way to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s annual meeting in San Francisco, California. I’ll be part of three different presentations:

• Panel: The Spectrum of Citizen Science Projects in Astronomy and Space Science (Mon. Sep 14, 3:30pm-5:00pm)
• Panel: International Year of Astronomy 2009 Cornerstone Projects: What’s Available for You (Tue. Sep 15, 3:30pm-5:00pm)
• Plenary Panel: The Future is Here: Can EPO Navigate the Digital Age? (Wed. Sep 16, 8:00am-9:30am)

AND…

There will be a meetup for anyone interested (Astro people, twitter people, Galaxy Zoo people, Astronomy Cast people, Star Stryder people, people people) on Wednesday night at 7pm at O’Sole Mio Restaurant.

Will I see you there?

From Shanghai to Chicago on American

In case you somehow missed it, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. For me, that has translated into the International Year of Astronomy Travel. According to my American Advantage account, I’ve earned 71,616 qualifying miles for this year to date. Now admittedly, that included bonus miles, minimum mile increases, and two for one miles, so my actual miles traveled is somewhat less, but as I’ve visited Long Beach, Eastern Illinois, Oxford, Kansas City, New York, Ontario (California), Pasadena, Oxford (again), Minneapolis, Seattle, Shanghai, Cheju, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Rio de Janeiro, and Greenwich, well, let’s just say it’s time to buy a new suitcase. And the travel isn’t over! I have two more big trips this month, and then AAVSO and dotAstronomy in November and December.

Here be Dragons (and more)

Dragon*Con

Next weekend, Labor Day weekend, I’ll be at Dragon*Con, along with Phil Plait, George Hrab, and the SkepChicks.

A Full Moon for Cancer

While there won’t exactly be a fan meetup at Dragon*Con, I would like to extend a personal invitation to all of you to the “A Full Moon for Cancer” Star Party, in memory of the Blue Collar Scientist, Jeff Medkeff. Phil Plait and I will be hosting this event on Thursday September 3 at the Bradley Observatory at Agnes Scott College. All proceeds from the event will go to the American Cancer Society.

The Main (Dragon*Con) Event

Here is my current schedule:

• Title: Feminine Mystique: Women in Engineering & Science
  Time: Fri 02:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Women make their mark! These engineers & scientists explain how they got involved, what they do & how to get your sisters & daughters to do the same.
  Panel: G. Mauldin-Kinney, Dr. P. Gay, L. Burns, T. Ray, K. Steadman
• Title: Citizen Science
  Time: Sat 11:30 am Location: 202 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Science wouldn’t be where it is today without the contributions of everyday people like you. Learn how to take part in all of the fun.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: The Big Bang: How It All Got Started
  Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: It started atomically small & is still expanding. What was the Big Bang & how do we know it happened.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: The Astronomer, the Alien Hunter, and a UFO Skeptic
  Time: Sat 07:00 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Three of the worlds leading researchers, and skeptics, discuss the state of UFO and Alien paranoia here and around the world.
  Moderator / MC for panel: Pamela L. Gay
  Panel: Phil Plait, Seth Shostak, J. Nickell
• Title: Are We Alone: A Discussion
  Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: 207 / 206 / 205 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Seth Shostak discusses the current public outreach goals of SETI, and how using the skeptical mindset relates to the work at SETI as a whole.
  Panel: Drs. Phil Plait, Seth Shostak, and Pamela L. Gay
• Title: AstronomyCast LIVE!
  Time: Sun 02:30 pm Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Join Dr. Pamela Gay, the award winning host of “The Astronomy Cast” and her special guest, SETI’s Seth Shostak.
  Panel: Drs Pamela L. Gay and Seth Shostak
• Title: Galaxy Zoo
  Time: Sun 07:00 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Citizen science. Ordinary people helping to classify thousands of galaxies.
  Speaker: Dr. Pamela L. Gay
• Title: Brazilianisms – Live!
  Time: Mon 10:00 am Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Kinsey Swartz brings his international podcast about an American living in Brazil, to Dragon*Con!
• Title: Backyard AstroPhysics – You Don’t Need a Ph.D to Do Astronomy
  Time: Mon 02:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1)
  Description: Our glorious night sky. Love astronomy but fear ‘physics’? You can have the wonders of our universe with ease in your own backyard.
  Panel: Drs Bill Keel and Pamela L. Gay

I will also be sitting at the International Year of Astronomy table in the Hilton during these hours: Friday 10am-12pm &4pm-5pm; Saturday 10am-11am; Sunday 12pm-2pm; and Monday 12pm-2pm. Come by, say hi, and register for a chance to win a Galileoscope!

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific Meeting

And September 12-16, I’ll be at what may be the worst conference venue ever: The San Fransisco Airport Westin will host the 120th Annibersary meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. I love the work the ASP does, I just really wish this meeting wasn’t at the airport of one of the coolest cities in the US (then again – maybe this is how they keep us at the meeting). I will be arranging a fan meet up once I have my full schedule. I suspect I’m going to aim for Wednesday night somewhere other than the airport

Somewhere over Florida

And a final word on traveling…

So far, I have to admit, I’ve faired fairly well. I’ve spent the night only once in Chicago. While my luggage was lost twice in 2008, I managed to keep my luggage with me so far through 2009. I’ve managed to keep my personal loses to a minimum. In addition to misplacing the standard small flock of miniature bottles of toiletries and hair elastics (no big deal), I also shed a pair of favorite sun glasses, a travel pillow, and the two prong square bit that allows me to plug my Mac power brick into a US wall. All in all, not too bad. I think I also misplaced some of my sanity, which I do miss, but I’m hoping to find it again sometime in 2010.

As an IYA organizer, one of my greatest delights has been randomly finding IYA logos in random places. My first moment of glee was at the National Maritime Museum in London where their gates were govered in IYA logos, and then I had a thrill to find IYA in Japan at a Solar Eclipse festival. Here in the US, my sightings (outside of events I was part of), have been few and far between. Okay, here in the US, my sightings have actually been non-existent, but then I don’t get out much. Nonetheless, IYA has a cool logo and seeing all the places that people have grown giant programs bearing the logo has been really inspiring.

In Mexico City, one well publicized public event attracted 25,000 people to fill a plaza.

In Brazil, 40,000 people have looked through a telescope for the first time.

In India they created a series of videos to play on the major networks in many languages.

In Japan, over 1000 book stores had IYA displays.

In South Africa, they realized most of their continent didn’t have the resources to do a lot so they launched a continent wide teacher training program. (And their opening ceremony was a weeklong packed event!)

In Portugal IYA was part of the Carnival celebrations – a theme for parades!

UNESCO is even working to turn astronomy sites into world heritage sites, working to rpoetct places with cultural value and dark skies for future generations.

For the past two days, numbers have been flying faster than I could catch as we all flipped franticly through our 12 minute presentations. Over and over I’ve been impressed with the energy that is coming from non-western nations. The best photo of the day was the winner of an astronomy folklore contest in Mexico accepting a Celestron telescope as a prize. He was an older farmer who could have stepped out of a folklore story – he wore a straw hate and linen shirt over his sun browned skin.

All across the globe, IYA was accepted as not just something neat to be a part of, but rather it was accepted as something necessary and needed as a mechanism to educate about science and to give hope and inspire people to be part of something global and great.

Basically – they got it. All around the world, already tired academics and amateur astronomers with full time jobs said “This is one year when I won’t sleep because I want to make IYA happen. I want to be part of helping people understand the Universe really is theirs to discover.”

They got it.

Now don’t get me wrong. Lot’s of people in the US get it too. There are several people who lost custody of their lives to IYA (and my husband would tell you I’m one of them). I look at the folks behind “Dark Skies Awareness,” “Galileoscope,” “From Earth to the Universe,” and other projects, and I see people who have made a lot of personal sacrifices (Sometimes even investing their own money to guarantee that projects happen!). We have our own cadre of people – proportional to our population – who are working their hearts out making IYA global events a reality. Somewhere, somehow, we just ran out of energy to hold GIANT real world events at the national level.

We also lack the density. At one point today, I was really not happy with the failure of the US to have GIANT events that weren’t related to the 100 Hours of Astronomy. But than I had a reality check. The 25,000 person event in Mexico was in Mexico City, which is bigger than New York City. They have a large enough population that if they want to have a 25,000 person astronomy event and throw enough publicity at it, they only need to collect 1 in about 400 people, and I’d guess that 1 in 400 people have a big enough interest in astronomy to actively go to a talk if they hear about it. Events like the Mars closest approach in 2003 (which was well publicized), do get very large crowds counted in the 1000s.

But lets face it, if you live in Montana, a 25,000 person event is going to be hard. Especially when you factor in the price of gas

The US is thinking globally in a lot of what we do. We are running 6 of the cornerstone projects, 1 task group, at least 1 special project, and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten about. We have a wonderful network of amateurs who are running a wonderful network of grass roots programs that are attracting a few hundred people here and a couple 1000 people there. Maybe, given the density of our country, this is as good as it gets. And what we have is pretty good. Pretty [expletive] good.

And we still have 5 months to go…

I’m currently at the XXVII General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro. For the next two weeks, astronomers from all around the globe will converge on the SulAmerica Convention Center.

I’m here to represent the USA in Special Session 2: The International Year of Astronomy. I have 12 minutes this afternoon to communicate all the IYA events in the USA, ranging from NASA events to Independent events to movie events, to everything else, including all of new media. In 12 minutes. I feel like I’m preparing as 12 course sampling menu, where no one item is enough to sate you, but taken together you feel a bit plump.

I arrived mid-day yesterday, and I have to admit that I’m still trying to process my impressions. Rio is a huge city! The population is 10 million. It is also a poor city. I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel in Cococabana. Along the way we through mile after mile of slums. I’d heard about the slums, but seeing them was a powerful things. There was a boy grazing a horse under a high way over pass, and a few minutes later I saw more horses grazing along a river covered in trash while kids played in a dusty lot between shambled buildings that often lacked roofs and windows.

This morning I learned that several of the male astronomers have already been mugged, at least one at gun point, within a block of the strip along which all our hotels are located. The message – Do Not Go Out After Dark – is being repeated over and over. But the meeting ends at 5:30pm and is set behind the mountains by 6pm. I think I just may be having dinner in my hotel room tonight.

But within the convention center, this is an astronomy conference like any other, just bigger. If anything, the population is younger than I’m used to (One senior astronomer quipped that most people her age probably opted to stay home and stay safe). There are row after row after row of posters, and room after room of parallel sessions. Talks are being given on every topic within astronomy, and representatives are here from all the space agencies, Astronomy Science Organizations (like NOAO and NRAO), and professional societies of the world. I’ve now heard 4 talks in 4 different accents (all talks are given in English). There are only 2 things marking the meeting as a bit different: There are seriously fewer laptops than I have seen in recent years (we were advised not to bring a computer unless we had to), and people not presenting are dressed very casually (T-shirts on tenured faculty! Again, we were recommended to dress down).

Throughout the week I’m going to try and blog and twitter highlights of the meeting. The rest of today and tomorrow morning is all IYA all the time. Then it will be science. And I’m going to try and bring as much of the science to you as I can. That said, I’m just one person and there is a lot going on. Want a fuller picture of what’s going on? Check out the full list of bloggers and twitters over on Orbiting Frog.

(Pictures will be added, so look back later)

Monday, June 8,
12 Noon: BLACK HOLES & PULSARS press conference

Tuesday, June 9
9:00 AM: GALAXY DISCOVERIES press conference
10:30 AM: INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY UPDATE press conference (Featuring me )
12:40 PM: STARS & STAR CLUSTERS press conference
6:30pm PLANETARY CLASSIFICATION SPECIAL SESSION (special URL)

WEDNESDAY June 10
9am GALACTIC CENTER press conference
10am NEW MEDIA SPECIAL SESSION (me again)
11:30am EXOPLANET NEWS press conference
12:30 WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER PREVIEW press conference

THURSDAY June 11
10am IYA CITIZEN SCIENCE SPECIAL SESSION (and me again…)

Join us?

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

This is a really comfortable conference on many levels. Many of the talks are being given by young astronomers (graduate students) and the audience is a rich mix of amatuer astronomers, professional astronomers from all types of universities (from major research schools to community colleges), professional science communicators (like the great Martin Ratcliffe), and students of all ages. There are only about 50 people, and most are local and no each other. We are in a pleasant room with plesant company observing science. AND I found a squishy sofa next to a power outlit to sit on. Really, what more could I ask for?

Talks are flying fast a furious and are presently addressing the area of stellar atmospheres. The last talk was written on Carbon stars and what can we learned by looking out what they look like spatially an over time. He described how these stars seem to fluctuate over time and reminded us that lots of carbon comes from dust being churned up an spit out of elderly red stars (Asymtopic Giant Branch Stars) that are in the process of dieing. There was something about the speakers talk that reminded me of sluffing off skin cells, and that really wasn’t an image I wanted. Aren’t you glad I shared that with you? Thing is – carbon does come from what’s left behind as elderly stars as they loose their outer layers. Mira, the poster child for AGB stars, actually looks like a comet when viewed in the ultraviolet because it is leaving behind so much of itself as it flys through space. Being made of the remnants of supernovae is kind of sexy. But Carbon – the building block of life – is really the snail trail through space of a red giant that is falling apart. Okay – analogy beaten until dead.

And now we’re on to discussing how close in Giant Planets (Hot Jupiters), effect their parent stars. If the parent star is at all non-spherical (and they do tend to bulge because of rotation), the planet can exert enough torque on the bulge to effect the rotation and precession of the star!

(The talks are only 10 minutes long! Eek!)

And now Hubble! Steve Hawley, who was an astronaut, is going over HST. I didn’t remember the original HST plan was to bring the telescope back to Earth every three years and service it. On May 12, the 5th (but called 4th) servicing mission of the HST should launch. The mission launched in 1990! This means there should have been at least 1 more servicing mission than we’ve had time (at least because the first (0th) servicing mission wasn’t part of the plan, but we launched HST with vision problems). If the next mission launches okay, HST will be good to go for a number of years, with new batteries, gryos, and even a new Control Unit. (And since I have a really cool project I get to do *only* if HST’s ACS camera works again, I really really hope things launch and work. And no, I can’t tell you about the project ) ACS is the 7th priority (planned for day 3 of 5), below WFC-3, batteries, STIS and Fine Guidance System. Astronauts, fly well, fly safe, repair quickly, and please give us back our telescope in wonderfully working order.

In case STS-125 fails (HST repair mision with Atlantis), they will launch Endeavour as STS-400. I love the number (Error 400 = Bad request).

We are going to break, and I’m going to post and get cookies.

There are certain meetings / star parties I love. This is one. Texas Star Party is another (selfish plug alert: Anyone want to invite me to go next year?) I’m really looking forward to going to NEAF in a couple of weeks. Small meetings of diverse groups of astronomy lovers are simply a good thing.