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.

Galileo's House (credit: Travlr)

It is January 10, 2010, and IYA is coming to a close.

I’m am currently sitting in the Palazzo Bo in Padau (Padova), Italy. I am here for the IYA2009 closing ceremony. It has been a long journey getting here. The idea of the IYA2009 originated form Franco Pacini in 2002, and in 2003, at the Sydney General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a resolution was adopted to make 2009 our year to share astronomy with the world. It was to be fit within the UN Millennium goals, and we were to help educate the world in science. In 2005, our UNESCO endorsed our cause, and at the 2006 Prague General Assembly meeting of the IAU, in between sessions stripping Pluto of its Planethood, a group of determined individuals set about defining what the IYA2009 would look like. By March of 2007, a set of international goals – cornerstone projects and needed task groups – had been defined, and in December of that 2007, the United Nations endorsed an Italian lead resolution to for IYA2009, with Japan seconding the resolution.

My own involvement beginning in March 2007, when I was asked to chair the US New Media working group – a team that eventually grew into the international New Media Task Group. Scattered throughout this room are the chairs of cornerstone projects, the single points of contact (SPOCs) for many nations, and other project and task group leaders like myself. We’ve traveled from around the world to sit here, in this town Galileo lived in, so that we can celebrate what we’ve accomplished (and to perhaps sigh in relief that the hard parts are now behind us).

The timing of IYA – 2009 – was tied to the 400th anniversary of Galileo using the telescope to make astronomical observations. This town was Galileo’s home, and his house is still here waiting to be explored. I found it quite by accident this morning as I wandered a bit lost through the winding allies of the Padau city center. While trying to figure out where I was, I paused in an intersection of too many narrow roads and started reading signs in a language I don’t understand, hoping some set of words would match something somewhere on my map. While I wasn’t able to figure out where I was, I did find a lone sign reading “Casa Galileo Galilei” with an arrow. With a few hours to spare and no better indication of what direction to head in, I took off down the side street. Galileo’s house bares a rather unimpressive white facade and no street level plaque or other markings. I would have missed it entirely had a second little sign not pointed randomly at the side of this otherwise bland building. I guess in a country that seen so many millennia of history, one scientist’s house isn’t all that important to memorialize.

A bit more walking later I was able to find myself and find the opening ceremony, and now I am in the room where Galileo gave his lectures at Padau University for 8 years. The room is packed, and yet I can feel the electric heater still struggling to work to warm this high ceilinged space against the chill of this January day. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like 400 years ago. Smoke from candles and/or oil lamps would have filled the room and students would have sat bundled against the cold with no electric heaters to warm them. Like us, the students may have found themselves on wooden benches, looking up to a speaker at the podium. There is no chalk board. There are no little tables for taking notes. It would have been just the speaker’s voice communicating ideas to students who would have absorbed concepts attentively.

Today we are not too different a crowd. As near as I can see, my little netbook is the only laptop out, and only a few notes are being scribbled on note pads on knees. We are today’s attentive students, trying to absorb the moment we worked so hard to reach. In the first afternoon session, we are listening to a chain of speakers: the rector of the University, the Mayor of the city, the UNESCO Assistant Director General, and IAU and INAF Presidents. It is a long stream of welcomes and thankyous and acknowledgements often (but thankfully not always) issued in two or more languages and all leading toward the first major presentation: an overview of the IYA 2009 by Catherine Cesarsky.

A few key points came from these first speakers: UNESCO speaker Walter Erdelen made the important point that UNESCO is going to be funding an Astronomy in Developing Nations program that will help spread space science. They invite us to collaborate with them and bring space science to the world. For some reason, I had never realized until now that the world is filled with nations where astronomy isn’t even taught at the university level. There are no minor in astronomy, no classes in aeronautical engineering; there is no option to educationally chance a dream of going to the stars. Now, UNESCO seeks to change that, getting astronomy all the way down in to the children’s schools. They are specifically looking for ways to promote teacher training, and to work on building alliances between universities in developing nations and in industrialized nations. The IYA2009 was a start of achieving this work, and many nations adopted programs like “Universe Awareness” (UNAWE) for kids, an ongoing project to get the youngest school children interacting with space science concepts. The power the IYA2009 had to change nations in positive ways is a constant them, and the INAF president, Tommaso Maccacaro wants to see our work continue. In his talk, he called for the beginning of an International Century of Astronomy and this caused a collective murmur that bordered on a groan. His idea, a century spanning 2010-2110 that would than lead to a millennia of astronomy where at the end we will have “Given up on having closing ceremonies.”

(Side note: It is amusing to watch speakers try and cope with a computer that responds with menus in Italian when you click on things)

According to Catherine Cesarsky, the IYA2009 Vision was to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe. With the year behind us, we may not have reached the entire world, but we have come close. 148 nations have participated, each them in their own ways participating in cornerstone and major projects and creating projects of their own.

It is amazing to hear from the SPOCs of developing nations, and realizing how much some nations were able to do with so little. Claudio Moises Paulo, SPOC of Mozambique, detailed how they had held major events in the southern most proveniences of their southern African country, and then used TV and radio to share their ideas nationally. With just 1000euro in seed money they were able to get UNAWE in place, participate in the Moon for Mankind photo project, hold a star party for Galilean nights, and to locally put together a 50 student project called “The Night with the Planets” that got kids looking up and learning. The also have a traveling project that uses meteorites to promote astronomy and are setting up a major astronomy club – the first of its kind in their country. They’ve had some outside help – Brazil sent them a “From the Earth to the Universe” exhibit, and two of their teachers will be going to Portugal to receive “Galileo Teacher Training” – but for the most part this has been a small cadre of dedicated individuals changing a nation. They are now working toward getting astronomy into their universities, and they have a simple dream of getting a planetarium for their nation.

In addition to Claudio Moises Paulo, we also heard from the Egyptian, Honduran, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Indian SPOCs. What struck me most as I listened to them talk was how much of an impact UNAWE has had. This program is almost non-existent in the US where people are perhaps too concerned with teaching to national standards and national exams and have forgotten how to teach to inspire. UNAWE inspires. We’ve also heard over and over of projects to get telescopes into the hands of children. In some nations, where Galileoscope’s $15 was still too much, they came up with their own $2 plans and had kids building little spyglasses to explore the universe. And beyond educating, the IYA2009 has also brought the world stamps and even coins. The Ukraine produced an amazing coin that I think I’m just going to have to google a source for.

It has been a long few years, but I feel safe in saying that while we did not give everyone in the world an experience in astronomy, we did reach more people than have ever been reached before. I suspect, based on random Fermi calculations, that we may have provided in the past year more kids a chance to build a telescope that can used to look at the stars than have been given that opportunity ever before.

We have been busy, and Catherine acknowledges we are all exhausted and that it is with a mix of sadness and relief that we realize it is now over and now we can rest.

But first we have one more day of pomp and circumstance. Tonight, following a cocktail hour there is a celebratory concert, where I’m amused to note both Holst’s Jupiter and John Williams Star Wars Saga are set to be played. It all then starts over at 9am. And I will be here to share what I see.

A New Website for a New Non-Profit: Announcing Astrosphere

It’s December 25, Christmas day 2009. In 6 more days we’ll ring in 2010, and in 16 more days IYA will come to an official end. There are still pieces to tie up – the evaluations will all take place in South Africa in March, and there are a whole lot of websites that need ownerships transferred hither and yon, but the public side of IYA is this -><- close to wrapping up.

As part of my own wrapping up process I need to do three things: clean my desk and triage the past 16 months of anything that came to me in paper; clean my hard drive and triage the past 16 months of anything that came to me in photons; and get websites set up to move all our cool new media products Beyond IYA.

So, today I cleaned my desk (putting all the papers on the floor where I can ignore them). Today I also cleaned my Mac Desktop (shoving all the files in a folder labeled “SORTLATER,” where I can ignore them). Cleaning done (or at least procrastinated on), I settled in to work on setting up a website: Astrosphere.org

This story actually started over a year ago. In the summer of 2008 a small group of us set about setting up our own 510(c)(3) non-profit. The cast of characters  included: myself, Fraser Cain, Phil Plait, Chris Lintott, and Tom Foster. Our goal: to create a non-profit “dedicated to promoting science and skeptical thought through internet-based technologies and distribution.” We named our non-profit Astrosphere New Media Association and we filed our dream first with the State of Illinois and than with the US Government. A lot has happened since those 2008 summer days. Chris has left our project as a friend to go on to form the Citizen Science Alliance, and he’s been replaced by Doug Isbell. I’ve left the Physics department at SIUE to become part of the Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Research, Education Outreach (Center for STEM REO). Phil became the president of JREF and then left the JREF for undisclosed bigger and better things in television. Doug has moved from Tucson to Berkely. Only Fraser and Tom remain in the same place the started in 2008.

It has been a long time since we filed those papers on those 2008 summer days, and the group of us have lived a lot of life in the past 16 or so months, but we still have our dream, and on November 2, 2009, the IRS granted us our dream, as they granted us our tax exempt status.

Already, Astrosphere has a series of projects housed beneath its virtual roof: Astronomy Cast (which will continue to be done on collaboration with Universe Today and SIUE), 365 Days of Astronomy, and the IYA Astronomy 2009 Island in Second Life (TM) are all moving to Astrosphere. We will also host some of the IYA websites, including Galileoscope and an archive of the US IYA website. In addition to these on-going projects, we’re also building new things: On the docket for the beginning of 2010 is a new project called “We are Astronomers” that is the brain child of Alice of “Alice’s Astro Info,” and it will collect pictures and biographical information from astronomers of all backgrounds and career paths (amatuer and professional). Astrosphere promises to be an exciting place, with projects rich with content for you to consume.

But this new organization can’t exist without you. We have bills: A PO Box, online accounting software, webhosting, and salaries.  Can you help? Here is exactly what we need:

Can you sponsor 1 or more days of 365 Days of Astronomy? For your $30 donation, we’ll read a brief sponsorship message at the beginning of 1 episode on a date of your choice (subject to availability), and for a $100 donation, we’ll read a sponsorship message at the end of 1 week worth of shows anytime in 2010 (again, subject to availablity). (donate to 365 Days of Astronomy)

Does your company want to help promote astronomy? Astronomy Cast is looking for coorporate sponsors to help fund the return of our weekly questions shows. Individual donations also are vitaly needed to keep our show going. (donate to Astronomy Cast)

Want to get involved building an Island? The 2009 Astronomy Island in Second Life needs donations (Linden dollars or real dollars) to help pay for texture uploads, contests, evaluation, and developer time. (donate to the Astronomy 2009 Island)

Astrosphere itself needs money to pay for our Quickbooks online subscription and we need a computer (I’m using my Mac Mini Original (c. 2005). (donate to Astrosphere’s general fund)

We would also like to someday pay part of my salary. Here is the dirty little secret I’ve kept hidden: Due to funding cutbacks and other issues, I haven’t had a full time job in 2 years. I made it up to within a few percent of full time last semester, but I have two grants running out and effective Dec 31, and I’ll only have a ~half time appointment starting in January. This means I will have more time to blog (woot), more time to work on Astronomy Cast (woot), more time to work on Astrosphere (woot). In exchange for me investing 2 full days a week doing nothing but Astrosphere related work, I’m hoping that people like you will invest in Astrosphere and inturn invest in me working to make new media dreams a reality.

Will you help my dream a reality?

This Week Only: White House Star Party and LCROSS Impact

As a 1 year long event, IYA2009 has worked hard to provide a steady stream of events. That said, some weeks are more interesting than others, and this week is shaping up to be one of those more interesting weeks. On October 7, Mr and Mrs Obama will host a star party at the US White House, and on the night of October 8/morning of October 9, the LCROSS mission will impact the Moon.

White House Star Party
There aren’t a lot of details, but here’s what I know. According to the White House Press Secratary, “the President and First Lady will host an event at the White
House for middle-school students to highlight the President’s commitment to science,
engineering and math education as the foundation of this nation’s global
technological and economic leadership and to express his support for astronomy in
particular – for its capacity to promote a greater awareness of our place in the
universe, expand human knowledge, and inspire the next generation by showing
them the beauty and mysteries of the night sky.” From what I’ve heard, around 200 middle school kids are going to be invited to participate. Helping these kids and the Obama’s celebrate the International Year of Astronomy will be a group of professional and amateur astronomers from all over the United States. According to the event organizer, “more than 20 telescopes [will be] set up on the White House lawn focused on Jupiter, the Moon and select stars; interactive dome presentations, and hands on activities including scale models of the Solar System, impact cratering, and investigating meteorites and Moon rocks.” An opening address and hopefully general coverage will be streamed on whitehouse.gov and on NASA TV.

LCROSS Impact
At about 4:30am Pacific time on October 9 NASA is going to drop an empty rocket segment into the Cabeus A crater near the moon’s south pole. Hot on the heels of this large chunk of metal will be the LCROSS space craft and its cameras. The rocket section should throw a large plume of material into space that LCROSS will fly through and (before itself crashing into the moon) probe for water. The impact is timed to allow it to sorta be dark across most of the US (or at least everyone west of the Mississippi), and most importantly, to allow the telescopes in Hawaii to see all the details about what’s going on. Want to watch it yourself? To see anything interesting, you’ll really need a telescope of some girth – 12″ at a minimum, and really 16″ or larger is probably a better bet. You can find everything you need here. Better yet, check out streamed video live from the Exploratorium.

Three Dreamers

I know a set of men who had a dream. They wanted to see every child in the world have access to a high-quality low-cost telescope. They wanted something that would show the rings of Saturn, survive a tumble down the stairs, and just keep revealing the sky night after night after night. This is a good dream; a dream inspired by the one laptop per child project. It is a dream that could be a reality, but it needs help. These men need you to dream with them and help their dream become a reality.

Moon thru a Galileoscope (by Andreas O. Jaunsen)

The Concept is Born
The Galileoscope project was launched about the time everyone realized the 2009 International Year of Astronomy idea was about to become a UN endorsed reality. Lead by Doug Arion, Rick Fienberg, and Steve Pompea, the Galileoscope telescope team gave themselves a goal of $10 per scope and set out to design. Like the original One Laptop Per Child goal of $100 per computer, they overshot a little bit. In this case, they came in at $20 per scope + shipping (or $15 to donate). Still not bad. See that image to the right? That was taken through a Galileoscope. These are systems with excellent optics.

The Problem
There is only 1 problem with the Galileoscope: No one can get one in a timely fashion unless, well, you go bid on this or this auction. Here’s the reason for the problem: No one ever provided the start up money needed to produce that first batch of Galileoscopes. We are literally collecting money until we have enough to run a batch out of the factories, producing and shipping that batch, and collecting money for the next batch. At a minimum, we just needed one rich soul to come forward with $200k to turn the factories on and start producing scopes while we collected a round of orders. Ideally, we need just $500k to get a stock pile of scopes we can sell with 24-hour shipping, while incoming money goes to the next round of orders. But that large donation never came. That donor, that sponsor, that dreamer never stepped forward. So these men with a dream, they put in their own money to get this started, and they asked the world – Will you buy a scope? We’re sorry, but it could take 6-months to get it. But will you buy a scope please?

Looking in the box

Originally, we’d all imagined millions of orders – both personal purchases and donations for kids everywhere in the world. Just like the original One Laptop Per Child, we have the option to Buy-One-Give-One. These scopes are the price of a double-CD. Why not think they’d sell like the latest top 40 hit? With orders like that, we projected we could turn on more assembly lines, speed up the rate of production, and keep maybe not ahead, but at least keep up. But those millions of orders never came. Everyone it seemed was waiting to see one, touch one, and play with one (or to at least have overnight delivery). But without those millions, that one touchable one never came to the vast majority of people who were thinking “Maybe I’d buy one. I just want to see one first.” They are coming to those who order, one by one a few hundred thousand scattered across the world at a time. They are coming. You may have yours (comment if you do?), and I know mine are coming soon.

A Solution
The one thing this project needs to overcome the delivery problem is funding. Galileoscope itself isn’t a non-profit company (simply because they didn’t spend all the extra money to become a not-for-profit. It costs almost $1000 in fees to set up a not-for-profit for something like Galileoscope!), so they either need help from other organizations or help from someone who doesn’t care about tax deductions. Bottom line – they need finacial help, and while I haven’t found that couple hundred thousand dollar donor, I’m hoping to find maybe a couple thousand dollars of help.

Felicia Day

This is where you, the casts of Battlestar Galactica and Ghost Hunters International, as well as the wonderful Felicia Day and the new non-profit Astrosphere New Media all come into play. At Dragon*Con in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend, I got pictures of a few famous people (and a few cool costumes) with a Galileoscope. When (thanks to the great Phil Plait!) I asked Felicia Day for her photo, she just signed the box. w00t! An idea was born! We’d get signatures and give someone the chance to have the ultimate geek gift of SyFy geekery. Our wonderful volunteer Laura S. took a box, and I took a box, and between us we cornered the cast of Ghost Hunters International and Battlestar Galactica. Two Galileoscopes. Two sets of different signatures. Two possibilities to make scopes for kids a reality.  The proceeds from this scope will buy scopes for needy kids, and with each scope purchased we are a little closer to a production run.

An eBay Auction
Right now on eBay we have (through Astrosphere New Media Association) two charity auctions. All proceeds are tax deductible and Astrosphere will use the proceeds to buy scopes for needy kids. The auctions are open until October 1st around 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern / 3pm London. You now have the chance to have your own scope, your own geek signatures, and to do a good thing all at once.

Now, I know there is the potential for the winning bid to not be divisible evenly by the $15 a scope costs, so I’m going to step forward and say I’ll personally round the bid amount up to buy that last telescope (I’m just a state university professor, so I can’t do anything cool like match the winning bids, but I would if I could, and if you can, would you please?) Right now, the two scopes are at

• 

  Felicia Day + Battlestar Galactica Cast signed Galileoscope

  Scope 1: Signed by Felicia Day, Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure, Alessandro Juliani, Mary McDonnell, Michael Trucco, Kate Vernon, Luciano Carro, Richard Hatch, and the BSG Science Advisor Kevin Grazier (see picture). Current Bid: $152!

• 

  Ghost Hunters Galileoscope

  Scope 2: Signed by Ghost Hunters International Joe Chin, JC Howell, Dustin Pari, Dave Tango, and 2 more (see picture). Current Bid: $66!

This means if the bidding ended right now there would be 15 scopes for kids who may never have seen the sky with anything other than their eyes. That’s awesome.

But can’t we do better?

Here is my challenge: Fandoms – Ghost Hunter Fans, The Guild / Dr Horrible Fans + Battlestar Galactica Fans – which of you can get the most scopes into the hands of the most kids? Show your fandom colors by bidding high and lending a helping hand.

Please?

We have 9 days left. Spread the word. Spread this post. Help gets scopes for kids. Help a dream.

Kate Vernon (Ellen Tigh) Cool Costumed People Adam Savage and Phil Plait Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers) Galiloscope in Surly Amy's Scientific Jewelry Richard Hatch (The ORIGINAL Apollo) Steam Punk Boba Fett

Remember: The Universe is Yours to Discover.

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…

One of the projects I’m involved in is the Portal to the Universe. This new website, slated to launch in beta on December 1, 2008, seeks to be a one stop shop for finding out what’s new and what’s being talked about in astronomy. It is not going to produce the content, however. It’s going to help distribute other people’s (your?) content in new (and hopefully more effective) ways.

Specifically, we’re going to do 4 things:

1. Highlight press releases coming out from all around the global astronomy community and cross-link them with blog posts, news articles, and potentially other new media related to the press release. This means, you’ll see a press release’s title and opening sentence or two on the Portal, and below it you’ll see links out to all the online buzz about that press release.
2. Index all astronomy RSS feeds we can identify (blogs, twitters, podcasts, vodcasts, images of the hour/day/week)
3. Index all nifty astronomy widgets that can be embedded in websites or iGoogle home pages
4. Create a giant phone book of astronomy (clubs, departments, centers, observatories, etc…)

I want to state for the record: we will not be scraping your feeds; we will be linking in titles and maybe the first 100 words to help drive people to your site. I want to see our collective audiences grow, as more voices are heard in a global astronomy dialogue.

Now the thing is, trying to find all the above content is not easy. I’m not talking about just trying to identify all the blogs in the US, but rather trying to identify all the astronomy related RSS feeds of all types in the world.

If I haven’t contacted you yet, I may not have been able to find you through Googling and looking at people’s blog rolls, or some other means (or you just did a really good job hiding your email address on your site).

Can you contact me? I want to include your content. I want to link to what you have to say. I want you to be a part of the Portal to the Universe, and I want to help you share your content with the world.

Here is my need: If you are a content provider, can you please email me at pamela@starstryder.com with the following informing:
Site Name, Site URL, RSS URL, Byline, Tagline, if your site is clean/explicit/somewhere inbetween, and information on what type of feed it is (Blog, images, twitter, video, etc). For office purposes only (where the office is the IAU IYA Secretariat), we also need to know who the correct contact person is, and what their email address is.

And here is my request: If you are a content provider, can you please put out a request on your feeds, your Facebook, and your twitter, to help me find the hidden content providers – the grad students telling their stories of the stars and the research scientists silently slaving over their blogs – so that I can help get their voices heard in the Portal to the Universe.

My fantasy is for every feed owner to get at least three different “Have you emailed Pamela Gay about your feed yet?” emails from a friend, a fan, and a fellow feed burner.

Can you help make a girl’s fantasy come true?

All I could think was, somewhere in the world, there is a team of people who worked to plan the International Year of the Potato just as hard as the team working to plan the 2009 Year of Astronomy.

And somewhere in 2009, some husband is going to hear something about IYA2009 on the BBC and will die laughing.

My husband was just clobbered with a pillow. May that future laughing man share my husband’s fate!

Sure, potatoes don’t have the cool imagery and ability to inspire that astronomy has, but they have the ability to end (or in Ireland cause) famine. So, all you folks supporting IYA2009, I want you to take a moment to consider the potato and have an International Year of the Potato moment.

The first thing I learned is Google actually has folks assigned to nurture non-profits to help them plug in. http://www.google.com/educators/geo . They have help, tutorials, ideas and more pre-prepared to help us build our content into virtual worlds. Their latest and greatet includes: weather, sunlight skins, 3D Buildinsg/SketchUp, a Swoop feature that lets you fly and zoom, and a “My Maps” feature to share content among friends.

Part of what this makes powerful is it allows people to explore independently and it has almost limitless applications and places to explore. Educational research (out of my head not out of the talk) shows that if you sit with a kid and work through every possible way of triggering a jack-in-the-box, the child when handed the toy will pretty much set it down and wander off. Show them only a couple of many ways, and they will sit down and try all the unseen permutations they can figure out. This means that you can hand a person the tools to access the “oh wow” factors of Google Earth and Google Sky, and students will continue to play and explore and learn to find all the ways the “oh wow” Jack jumps out of the Google box.

Google wants to be a part of IYA. (And I’ll be hunting them down later.) They encourage all of us to go to the Geo Education online community and participate. I’m ready, I’m primed, and I want to learn.

After a brief talk, our presenter showed a series of examples (.kml files), including animations, content from missions, and other “Google Skins” created in the kml markup language for people to explore. These can be found in the Google Earth “Gallery” window.

I have come to realize that I desperately need to find a Google Sky and Google Earth expert for the IYA New Media Task Group.

(Side note: There is a Johannes Kepler actor here who has a southern bit of twang! I find this very amusing.)

I can now proudly state that 400 Years of the Telescope Partnership will be sponsoring the International Year of Astronomy’s Island.

I have been lucky enough in my career to have had a handful of sponsors for various projects, and every one of my sponsors has been an organization that I have respected and enjoyed my interactions with in the past (SAO, Audible, OPTCorp…). Not everyone is so lucky. For the past several months I have worked with the folks of 400 Years of the Telescope through my development of the IYA-US website, and I have come to respect them through their newsletter, amazing images, and website as I have worked with their friendly staff. To get funding from them in particular makes this moment sweeter.

We still have a long way to go to raise the funding we need for IYA, but this is a huge and exciting moment for us. We’re ready to run – Adrienne Gauthier has detailed amazing IYA plans – and this funding marks the firing of the start gun.

Thank you for getting us started. Kris and the 400 Years of the Telescope Partnership – You’ve helped make our IYA wishes come true.

Here is a plan of events. All will be going up on Astronomy Cast Live!

Saturday, Noon to 4pm: AstroZone Can’t come? Join us on UStream! We will be UStreaming various events. I’ll announce everything when we go live on my twitter account (see box at right)

Sunday, 1:45-5:15: A User’s Guide for Plugging into the New Media Community for IYA

Monday, (9:30, 11:30) Press Conferences (I’ll try to have someone stream over UStream all press conferences so you can ask questions too)

Monday, All Day, Various IYA sessions to be blogged on IYA and Astronomy Cast Live by Georgia Bracey

Monday, 12:45pm, NASA Townhall. I’ll do my normal coverage of Griffin.

Monday, 2pm-3:30pm, Special Session on New Media (I’ll try to UStream this as well

Monday, Public Lecture by Dana Sobel (will text blog)

There are also a series of invited talks we will try to cover, and Preston Gibson (Astronomy Casts new producer) will be doing video interviews. At the end of the Monday, I’ll let you know Tuesday’s plans. This is going to be a busy American Astronomical Society / Astronomical Society of the Pacific Meeting