I am very pleased to announce the start of a new project for me: short, high-quality astronomy videos posted on Hulu.com!
Before I bore you with details, here’s one of the first videos: The Cookbook of Galactic Cannibalism (after a very short ad).
There are two more up right now as well: Black Hole Death Rays and The Changing Face of Mars. They are on Hulu under the channel name Bad Astronomy.
These videos are a collaboration between producer/director Tom Lucas (who made such fantastic documentaries as "Runaway Universe" and "Supertwister"), cameraman Rich Lerner, and me. I met Tom a few years back when we worked together on the planetarium show "Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity" (and the NOVA program that came out of that, "Monster in the Middle").
The idea for these videos was to make shorter (<5 minutes) but still high-quality mini-documentaries that are interesting, fun, and feature very cool animations from NASA and other sources. We created these three as a test to see how things go, and we have plans to make many more.
I’m pretty excited about this; I foresee a pretty good future here. We filmed these in hi-def so that even higher-quality footage can be available if needed, so these shorts can be used in a lot of venues. I’d love to see these getting into classrooms, for example.
And we’re looking at many different topics. Got any ideas? Feel free to leave comments here, but keep in mind the topic can’t be too broad (dark energy might be tough to tackle in less than 5 minutes, though it would be interesting to try — in fact, while writing that sentence I came up with an idea I might want to test out…), needs to have a "coolness" factor to it, and, of course, dynamite visuals.
We’ll be starting up more of these pretty soon, so stay tuned!
Update: Hulu.com is not available outside the US, but we will be putting the vids up on other sources which can be seen anywhere very soon.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Nooooooo!
Is there anyway for international people to watch these?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I’d love to, but they don’t allow international viewers, probably as a result of trying to scrupulously follow licensing agreements. One sees the same problem at places like NBC.com or even Pandora.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Is it possible to put a version on youtube as well? Hulu doesn’t trust us foreigners.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Dan, I put one on my MySpace page, and if you search MySpace video for “Bad astronomy” you should find the others, too.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:04 am
We’ll have these up on an international platform soon too. Our channel, SpaceRip, is playing right now on VUZE and on JOOST. So the BA clips will certainly go there. VUZE is nice because it features HD (that is, highly compressed HD) res, and has a big quickly growing audience.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Awesome. Thanks a tone, Mr. Plait.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Supernovas would make a great clip, along with perhaps the WMAP results of the CMB radiation. Another great one, and perhaps one that would be more down to Earth, would be the creation of the Moon with the plowing of the Mars sized object on our fair planet.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Can’t watch it from the UK, I am afraid!
It’s all right, I’ll download some of the new Doctor Who episodes on the BBC iPlayer instead…
What?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I say we all pay phil 1$ to put his videos up on youtube
April 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Oh, except for that the Myspace videos “Cannot be displayed in your region” either…
Oh well, just have to wait until their up on the SpaceRip channel!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Exceedingly cool!
And for those who cannot view them, well, I have the same problem with trying to watch Auntie stuff here in the US. I feel for you.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Can this be made into an iTunes vodcast?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:19 am
grrr! Hulu %$/?*%/? me off. Can’t view in Canada.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I have one comment on style: the hand-held camera, angle up on you (Phil), is too distracting. In my opinion it should be closer to eye-level (not necessarily exactly; perhaps very slightly angle-up), mounted on a tripod or hand-held inertial stabilizer.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I think the Giant Impact theory of Moon formation would be a fun one.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:25 am
acá tampoco anda
what about posting the videos on good’ol youtube? one about solar flares would be nice
April 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Think global Phil….
April 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Doesn’t YouTube have a hi-res version? Just post it there.
I remember the time when websites didn’t do IP recognition and the internet was a true international forum. Then I tried to buy a book from a foreign website and got a shock when they charged me three times as much because I lived in the wrong country. Feh!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Moon volcanoes.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:48 am
The “inter” part of the word “Internet” means… what again?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Oh man. Bring out the cheese to go with this whine.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Moon hoax
Face on Mars
The Zetans
April 16th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
To be quite honest, you leave such a bad taste in the mouth with your parochial shunning of viewers outside the US, that I don’t know why you bothered.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Simon, I rather doubt it was intentional shunning.
However, due to the way IP laws and advertising and such work out, I’m not overly surprised that I am unable to watch these videos anywhere.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Honestly, guys.
I applaud this, even if I can’t see it personally.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Sorry, Phil, but parochialism is parochialism. I’m shocked that you would allow your fine work to be hosted with such a closed-minded organization. Science and communications are supposed to open the mind and allow a better understanding of each other. This undermines that completely.
I’m….I’m….just…..disappointed in you Phil.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
My only thing, and I am nitpicking here, is that I don’t like the personification of things. I work hard to avoid this in my classroom. Galaxies don’t “live.” Magnets do not attract because, “North and South like each other,” and they don’t repel because, “Like poles don’t get along.” (My own example) I know it is metaphorical - designed to allow people to understand, but it just gets under my skin since it is quite possible to explain these thing without adding in the human factor.
Overall excellent videos that I will be sure to use in my classroom.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
“The Cookbook of Galactic Cannibalism”? I liked the original title better: “To Serve Man.”
;^D
~David D.G.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
As always, only available to those in the United States. While in retrospect it’s not entirely unexpected, I still am disappointed. You Americans can act so superior.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Nope…
“We’re sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States. For more information on Hulu’s international availability, click here”
Bad choice of streaming service!
April 16th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
As Tom noted above, we will have version on international platforms soon.
Cripes! I’ll note the BBC online videos are only available in the UK, too. There are legal issue here for those hosting services.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I came to complain about the anti-foreigner hosting choice, but I see others already did that.
I hope there will be an international version too soon.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Daniel: The USA just needs such informative VidBytes more than the international community. After all, the nation was settled by religious outcasts from your countries. Would you really expect us to be all that sane?
Phil: The process of discovering facts and applying theoretical constructs to them would be a fertile arena. Might require several such VidBytes.
GAry 7
April 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I’m a fan of the video, but like others, I hate the host. I especially dislike ads displayed on top of a running video.
Hulu is based on bringing noxious, outdated distribution theories to the web, so I won’t be watching further episodes…
I would really much rather buy them on DVD and support you directly.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
After the short ad and after Phil started talking I saw a Ragu logo in the lower right corner for a few seconds. So was this show also sponsored by His Noodly Appendage? Cool episode!
April 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
“Oh man. Bring out the cheese to go with this whine.”
Yeah, I can see it, so screw everybody else.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
While you included credits at the end, it would be awesome to also have a transcript with screen shots and links to where more information on each concept, image and video can be found. This would be a great resource to classroom teachers who may want to use the videos as a jumping off point in a lesson.
Topic ideas:
Intro to the EM spectrum, and what we can learn at each wavelength
Planet formation and Circumstellar Disk evolution (”Planetary Nurseries”)
Star formation
April 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Excellent videos. More of the same please.
When you do go international, I am sure the readers of BA outside
the USA will agree.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
“Yeah, I can see it, so screw everybody else.”
Nah. I can’t see them either, but I’m not crying about it. They’ll be available to me soon enough. I’m just grown up enough not to turn this into an anti-US thing. I mean, really!
April 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Videos on MySpace also don’t play here. Please make another post when it goes international, since we always get lost tracking comments.
(There should be some technology that would send us an email whenever someone left a comment with our name on it.)
April 16th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Canadians need astronomy videos too!!
April 16th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Ideas for short videos:
Moon phases (I think it is cool because people can go out and see for themselves and participate in astronomy. However, it may not be as cool as requested)
Europa’s possible life-friendly conditions
Telescopes
Discovering the Andromeda Galaxy as outside the Milky Way
Supernovae
Nebulae
Popular telescope images (how they were made, what they are of, how big the objects are, how far they are)
Writing a dissertation about brown dwarfs (OK, NOT cool)
Astrophotography
Amateur astronomy
Voyager missions
SOHO
Chandra
VLA
SETI/Arecibo
Axial tilt being the reason for the season
Traveling at or near the speed of light
Tracking satellites online and by observing
Astronomy software
Asteroids and NEOs
Calculating distances in the universe
April 16th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Dear BA,
Can’t you just put these beauties directly on your site?
April 16th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Congratulations! It’s great that they are getting into the mainstream!
April 16th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I go to all the trouble of connecting through a proxy server in the US, and it comes up with an unspecified error. It seems Hulu doesn’t even deliver to all Americans.
They were still willing to show me the ads.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I’d like to see one on gravitational lensing and the double quasar.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Everytime the same frustrating messages, when you show some cool* videos: “Not for international viewers…”
*I hope they are, I never get to see them…
April 16th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
You’re so animated when you talk about black hole indigestion. *pfffft* Silent but deadly!
April 16th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Well done, Phil! Keep ‘em coming.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Very well done - and I personally LIKE the camera angle. I like your final line and photo on the Changing Face of Mars too - very cute. Take that, Hoagie!
JC
April 16th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
@Science Teacher:
I think the word you are looking for is “Anthropomorphism”.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Oh, it is because of intellectual property issues that we cannot watch these things outside the U.S.? Well that’s allright then. Free exchange of ideas is a stupid concept anyway…
April 16th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Hey international folks: try http://coolblog.profit42.com/2008/01/05/how-to-view-hulu-videos-outside-the-us/
Dunno if it’s safe/legal, hopefully someone who understands how it works might comment, but it’s working for me, i can view the video fine from Ireland.
Liam
April 16th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Even Hulu won’t come to Markham, stupid Hulu
April 16th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
How much did you have to pay the cameraman to fly into the blackhole?
April 16th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Liam, thanks but no. I’m not ready to install software from a site that calls itself “The Ultimate Hacking Lounge” which, to top it off, gets its own headline wrong (”The Ultimate Hackers Lounge”) in its page title.
Besides, Hulu sucks so much I wouldn’t even want to hack into their video stream if I could.
Bah.
^_^J.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Dr Strangelove says: “The “inter” part of the word “Internet” means… what again?”
Interconnected, not “international.”
- Jack
April 16th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Content: 10/10
Production: 10/10
Direction: 5/10
Who decided on the “Amazing Colossal Man” viewpoint? Something like that should be used sparingly. Some viewers, me for instance, feel intimidated when looking up at the speaker towering over me. I’m sure it was to get the projector in the background, but you can do that without putting the camera on the floor. If straight-on shots are too boring, then maybe you can move the camera around the planetarium slowly.
My impression watching this is someone pontificating, issuing fiats from on high, which is exactly the opposite of your style!
- Jack
April 16th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I saw the Bad Astronomy videos listed on Hulu today and I thought they ripped you off. I guess not. I will have to check them out.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:02 am
What about Youtube? What do you have against international viewers?
April 17th, 2008 at 12:51 am
These are more than worthy successors to your too-brief Q&BA video series! They really deserve to reach a wider audience, and Hulu is an awfully obscure place to put such terrific work.
I vote for iTunes…….. that way I can DL things automatically, watch them whenever I want, and not have to put up with the herky-jerkiness of streaming on my old slow-dog puter with its not-terribly reliable connection (bleeping Verizon! but I’m tapping into a friend’s connection via AirPort, so I don’t have a lot of control over things).
How about a feature on Wolf-Rayet stars? For some unknown reason, I became fascinated with them (and aced the class by writing a term paper about them, she said modestly =grin=) when I took an introductory astronomy course in college back in the early 70s. I’d love to hear what a real live astronomer has to say about them now.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:15 am
When it comes to choosing an international platform for these vids, I’d recommend vimeo.com. It’s a fairly new YouTube-esque site, but encoded video quality is much higher.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:54 am
These are great Phil! I say to make all of them, the world needs them for amazing reference material if nothing else!
April 17th, 2008 at 7:22 am
The seasons.
Orbital Mechanics of Space craft.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:28 am
I snorted my lunch through my nose with the last line of “The Changing Face of Mars” when it cut to a side shot of “The Face on Mars”.
Just too funny.
Keep up the good work, Phil!
Find a way to get these out to the whole world!
April 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Phil,
Just curious the galaxy in the video labeled with an arrow <– Sun
What galaxy was that really, or did you recently travel to above teh ecliptic of the galaxy and not tell us..
April 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Great. Another ‘no no, US exclusive only’ video. The end of Internet seems near. These region restrictions are complete BS.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thanks Liam for your suggestion - the program does work. Did a little checking up on in from the Internets before installing, to make sure it’s not a nasty bit of spyware or anything, and it seems legit.
It’s free, and works on the basis of an add-bar it adds to the browser window when you are running it - though it seems that it only adds it to ONE browser window, so when you re-open the browser in another window, you’ll be browsing just as usual, with the exception that you can now view sites that are closed off from non-US visitors.
But I have to say that Hulu still sucks in a fairly epic way - the site is SLOOOOOOOOOOOW! And the buffering is insane - instead of stopping for a reasonable time and downloading a reasonable buffer, it stops for a second, then plays a second, stops for another second, etc. If you stop the video manually, it will load up some buffer, but it seems to me it has some limit after which it won’t buffer if you aren’t playing the video - I left the video stopped for an hour, and it had buffered less than a minute.
So not bothering with Hulu videos even now that I could - too frustrating, sorry. I’ll wait for the material to appear on a site that does not suck. I’m glad though that now I can get Pandora working again!
April 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Despite technical problems, ( I get them a lot with Hulu. ) I was able to view all of one of your vids. Well done. The animation supported the text well. It really helped get across astronomical ideas. I’d put your stuff up on a pedestal next to Spitzer Hidden Universe.
Like some other commenters I not thrilled with the choice of Hulu. Also while low-res versions of these videos wouldn’t be quite as pretty, they would be a boon to the bandwidth challenged.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Bravo! Great work! I hope to see more.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:00 am
How about a video on the signifigance of collisions in space.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:35 am
For some reason, the IT Nazis block Hulu, but not youtube, on our network. However, if I go through video.aol.com, it works. weird. Thank goodness, because I sometimes need an emergency Firefly fix in the middle of the day.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Phil, you wrote
What’s the copyright status of the videos? Creative Commons?
April 20th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Hi Phil,
Good job on the videos, the more exposure sciency stuff gets, the better. But speaking of exposure, I wish I could see these videos: both hulu and myspace refuse to show me your work. I hope you also agree that region-locking is one of the bad things that is happening to the internet these days. Although I am sure I will get to see your videos a few days from now, please do not forget your fans who just happen to live beyond an imaginary and arbitrary line on the world map - I believe there is a significant amount of them!
April 20th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I agree with all of the anti-American international viewers. Hulu perfectly and in every way represents every citizen of the United States, and by Hulu not allowing you to see the BA videos it’s a reflection of American arrogance and disdain for non-Americans, despite the fact that Dr. Plait immediately (8 minutes after posting) provided an alternative way to see his videos. I’ve been wondering why the national anthem of the United States is, “Hulu can you see, Hulu dawn’s early light, Hulu NBC Fox, Hulu Hulu Hu-Lu-Lu . . .”
April 20th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Daniel,
I am not sure whether you were referring to me, but if you did, then you completely misinterpreted my post (and being rude about it too): this has nothing to do with anti-Americanism, but rather is a critique on the practice of blocking traffic from entire regions of the world. I thought I made that pretty clear. As Phil has noted himself, the BBC video player also refuses to show their feeds to non-British residents. I am sure there are many other examples of sites blocking traffic from American residents. Do you not think this is a bad thing?
The one alternative Phil supplied, at least as far as I could see, is a myspace video which, unfortunately, is also unable to play for me.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:54 am
cool!
Suggestion for topic: Planetary nebulae. They are visually stunning, and the “this is where our sun is headed” part of the story makes it appealing to a general audience.
Another: It’s educationally useful to have a tour of the Milky way with the right kind of graphics that would give some sort of idea of the vast scale, and how tiny our sun is, how far away the nearest single G/K type stars. Though this has been done before, I hope that eventually, if enough people tell the tale enough times, the info will filter into people’s consciousness so they’ll understand how unlikely it’d be to get alien visitors, and to put our sense of ourselves as so bloody important and central to rest.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Despite being outside the U.S., I did manage to see the vid using AnchorFree. Good work, by the way.
No matter how many times I hear those huge numbers (trillions of galaxies, billions of stars etc) seeing it again in a presentation like that is awe-inspiring.