Next year marks the International Year of Astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo turning his telescope to the sky and revolutionizing the way we think of the Universe, and our place in it.
There are many things IYA is doing to celebrate, but one of my favorites is the 365 Days of Astronomy effort. Starting January 1, this site will feature one podcast about astronomy per day for the whole year. I’m excited for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the people involved: Pamela Gay, Fraser Cain, Michael Koppelman, and, why, I might even drop in a ‘cast or two.
And this means you too! We want people to contribute, including making your own podcast and submitting it. That’s right; you can contribute your own voice to the choir in an international effort to teach people about the wonders of the sky. Don’t just leave all the heavy lifting to us, folks: take a turn at it. Who knows? You might just like it, too.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Great(!), another means by which those Electric Universe proponents can spread their diatribe over the Internet.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
On the other hand, Ivan, if it results in just a few more people bothering to go outside and look up instead of taking root in front of the TeeVee, wouldn’t that be worth a thin film of woo woo scum?
October 9th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
To celebrate IYoA, Industry Canada is letting Canadian radio amateurs use special callsigns for Jan/Feb 2009. I will be doing this as CG3OIJ. I’m currently trying to think up an appropriate, astronomy-related QSL (acknowlegement) card design.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Ivan, not everything submitted will be accepted. If Hoagland submits, I suspect he’d be told to take a walk.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I would love to participate in this. There is even link with instructions on how to make a podcast. I have a couple of subject ideas, but it has been my experience that just listening to one person speak can get kind of dull. Is there anyone out there that may want to collaborate on an episode or two?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Awww…so no rants accepted about how there is no gas out there, that it’s all plasma?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Phil Plait, I’m glad to hear that, but I’ll wager that if Richard C. Hoagland’s submissions are rejected, he will claim it’s yet another example of a Government conspiracy to “suppress the truth.”
October 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the heads up on this. As a grad student interested in outreach, I’ve been looking for opportunities like this to “spread the good word”, as it were. I submitted four ideas this afternoon…we’ll see if anything sticks.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Is this right? 2009 is the Year of Astronomy on top of being the Year of Darwin?!?!
Science celebration overload!
October 9th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Isn’t next also the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, should be an interesting year.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
October 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[...] Iedere dag een sterrenkunde-podcastIn het kader van het Internationale Astronomische Jaar 2009 is men van plan om vanaf 1 januari iedere dag een podcast uit te zenden over een sterrenkundig onderwerp. Nou, is dat geen geweldig initiatief? Ik heb al vaker geroepen dat sterrenkunde via podcasts heel erg nuttig en leerzaam kan zijn, dus ik ben hier erg blij mee. Iedere dag een verse podcast aangeleverd, zo te beluisteren via je Ipod of andere MP3-speler. Als ik Phil Plait, de Bad Astronomer, goed beluister eh… belees dan wordt iedereen gevraagd een bijdrage te leveren aan één van die 365 te leveren podcasts. Kortom, ga naar de website van 365 Days of Astronomy en kijk hoe je die bijdrage kunt leveren. Bron: Bad Astronomy. [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Dang – I coulda scooped the BA! I sent a note about this to my local astronomical association, but didn’t put it in my blog yet. Alas, I let the opportunity slip. I will be adding a note about this to my blog in just a few minutes though.
But, yeah, this sound very interesting – and even though I prefer listening to speaking (different story with regard to typing).
John B. Sandlin
October 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Yes, I’ll be submitting some stuff, too for the IYA vodcasting project.
The Hoagland thing reminds me of the time we were doing a Case for Mars meeting in Boulder (back in the late 80s) and Hoagland and his gang submitted a paper WELL AFTER the deadline for submissions. It was the usual load of speculative fiction, but the organizers told him that he’d submitted too late. They, in fact, rejected a few other papers that had arrived much too late, too. Hoagland insisted it was because he was being censored (and wa a complete WATB about it)… and made such an ugly fuss that eventually they let him come and put up a poster. As I recall, he didn’t get much traction there…
But he got his day in the Sun.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Can we expect a IYA 400th anniversary pic from Hubble on some galactic goody we havent seen yet?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Wow, I had no idea. I’m looking forward to a podcast every day.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I put in for Feb 4th, my birthday. I didn’t see anything there about submitting the title, though… I’ll have to get busy and line up an interview first, then I’ll have a title.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Can I make a podcast about Halton Arp?
.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:58 am
The IYA also celebrates the 400th anniversary of the publication of Kepler’s Astronomia Nova!
October 10th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Hey, Richard Drumm, February 4th is my birthday, too!
October 10th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Ivan3man said:
Hey, wow!! What are the chances of that???? Oh, about 1 in 365 I guess.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:55 am
Evolving Squid said:
Well, even though I don’t have any kit to operate on HF….
A great big Hello from G0TSR.
I reckon there must be plenty of Hubble images that would make good QSL-card fodder.
Ooh! Or, how about the Cassini image taken in the shadow of Saturn? You could put a little arrow pointing at the Earth with a sign that says “you are here”!
October 10th, 2008 at 3:56 am
Hey, Phil, shouldn’t the title of this entry be “Approximately 365.25 days of astronomy”?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Ivan:
Only the -BEST- people are born on Feb 4th, ya know!
;-D
Happy Birfday!
Rich
October 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Who are you asking Mike?
Those who manage this outreach/programme/whatever aren’t reading this blog are they?
And a podcast about Halton Arp’s contributions to astronomy could be a very interesting one indeed … after all, there’s an excellent reference work that bears his name (“The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies”, I think that’s its name), even if it’s now of little more than historical interest, if only because anyone taking part in the Galaxy Zoo’s Merger Hunter project could bag more such objects in an hour or so’s classifying than in the entirety of Arp’s catalogue.
Most interesting of all might be a clear exposition of how astronomy, as a science, works … ideas such as quasar intrinsic redshift are subject to objective, independently verifiable (and verified) tests, and if found wanting are discarded. I suspect, however, that even a summary of the ways in which observations since the early 1970s clearly show Arp’s ideas are wanting would greatly exceed the length allowed for a podcast …
October 13th, 2008 at 1:35 am
[...] Del weblog “Bad Astronomy” de Phil Plait, un excelente promotor de la ciencia y el ateí… me llega la información que como parte de las actividades a realizar por el motivo del “Año Internacional de la Astronomía”, en el 2009, se realizará un podcast conjunto donde la gente participará para llenar todos los días de ese año de astronomía. [...]
February 5th, 2009 at 8:00 am
[...] song to 365 Days of Astronomy, the year-long daily podcast for the International Year of Astronomy. The podcast is created by you: anyone who wants to talk about astronomy and can record their [...]