After the Con is before the Hangout-A-Thon!
It feels like we only did the CosmoQuest-A-Con in July yesterday, but it’s been three months – and that means we’re ready for this year’s Hangout-A-Thon starting today! This weekend our team of scientists, science communicators and artists will science for their supper and we invite you to come along for 36 hours of space discussion and edutainment! The schedule is is still in flux, but all information will be provided later today on the Hangout-A-Thon page!
We will have lots of guests, giveaways and surprises – our theme this yeare is COUNTDOWN TO FLIGHT featuring the history of rocketry and spaceflight from the first ancient fireworks to modern spaceflight today. We will even build a rocket park in Minecraft for which you can already sign up!
Our goal is to raise $40.000 in 36 hours, but you can already go to the donation page right now to help us fund our running costs and feed our small team.
Tune in TODAY on Twitch at 16:00 UTC for the opening ceremonies!
ALL EVENTS ARE FREE TO WATCH!
You are not obligated to donate if you are not able to, we know times are difficult at the moment but we still appreciate any form of support even if you are just spreading the word!
UPDATE: Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we were able to match our funding goal and the future of CosmoQuest has been saved once more! It has also been an amazing show, the CosmoQuest Crew worked so hard over the weekend.
And a short disclaimer because I’ve been asked this before: I’m an unpaid volunteer for CosmoQuest and I will not receive any money or other compensation from the fundraiser. I will be participating in the stream on Sunday around Noon to help out with the overnight shift and helping out moderating the chat, but that is the limit of my involvement.
There are 106 sessions scheduled, we’ve got a full list of guests, half a box of LEGO, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it!
Yes, we’re doing it again! After our first digital online convention last year, CosmoQuest is back with another Con – and this time we have a theme! We decided to go retro and since many of us grew up in the 1980s, we’re calling it an 80’s Space Party! We are going to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch, Voyager 2 arriving at Saturn and much more.
There are over 50 awesome guests ranging from scientists to artists, musicians and gamers – the full list is on the Convention Page and there will also be contests, exhibitions and many other events. Visiting the main stage on the CosmoQuest Twitch Channel is free, but because this is also a fundraiser we’re also offering access to more content on a dedicated Discord channel for $30 or $100 tickets you can still purchase right now!
I will take part in a pamel on 80’s gaming on the Discord server on Saturday too and I’ll be around the Twitch chats and the Discord server all weekend. It’s going to be a lot of fun – having grown up in the 1980s myself, this is going to be a fantastic journey back in time!
Tune in today on Twitch at 21:30 UTC for the opening ceremonies!
This weekend, Astronomy Cast celebrates its 500th episode, which will be recorded later today in Edwardsville in front of a live audience! Five hundred half-hour podcasts, more than half of them also streamed live with video during the recording, make up an immeasurable trove of sciencetific and astronomical knowlegde that has always been and always will be available for free.
It all started back in 2006, almost exactly twelve years ago, when podcasts were still a new thing and everything was an experiment. Late summer that year, Astronomer Dr. Pamela Gay, who had already been podcasting before anyone knew what it was and space and science journalist Fraser Cain, the editor of Universe Today, joined forces for the first time to record the inagural episode of Astronomy Cast, which was released on September 10, 2006. Almost exactly twelve years later, the 500th episode is about to be recorded – and there will be many more.
So, how did I get involved with Astronomy Cast? Back in 2013, I wrote a long post for the Hangoutathon fundraiser to chronicle my journey to CosmoQuest, the citizen science project tightly linked to the podcast. This article is a rewriting of this original post with some additional thoughts.
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I haven’t written anything on this blog for months, but the tradition of lamenting the annual Perseid Meteor Shower seems like a good opportunity to start again. This year, the Peak Perseid Season from August 11-13 falls onto an end of a three-week monster heatwave here in Europe and that means, very predictably, clouds! Of course during the heatwave we’ve had beautiful starry nights, but not so much now. As usual, the Perseids will peak on August 12 as usual, so this and the next night will probably be the best chance to look for meteors, but generally the few days around the peak date are usually good too.
Hopefully, I can still catch a meteor on a photo with my new-ish camera sometime in the next nights – I’m not really hopeful, but I will set up the camera this night if it isn’t too cloudy or raining. And if your weather looks good and you want to try watching, here are the usual links:
If you want to know more about the Perseids, Universe Today has a really good Observer’s Guide written by David Dickinson and Fraser Cain’s short explainer video about meteors in general is also very recommended. In short, if you have a reasonably clear view of the sky to the east and northeast, you are all set to go! You don’t even need any fancy equipment, just your eyes and some patience are enough. Don’t use binoculars or a zoom lens – you need to have a wide angle of view because the Perseids tens to appear all over the Northwest skies and when they come, they are not easy to miss!
I almost forgot to post the annual Perseid Meteor Shower article this year, because the curse has indeed struck with all force – it has been raining non stop here since Thursday and the chance of actually seeing a Perseid meteor around here are somewhere around zero. The Perseids will peak on August 12 as usual, so the night from the 12th to the 13th will probably be the best chance to look for meteors, but generally the few days around the peak date are usually good too.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to see the sky at all in the last couple of days, so I hope that everyone else has a bit more luck. I was really hoping to try catching one with my new cameras – last year I haven’t had the time to do that and the photo I’ve been using on this post is from 2008, so I thought I deserve some luck this year. It does not look good tonight, though…
If your weather looks good and you want to try watching, here are the usual links: If you want to know more about the Perseids, Universe Today has a really good Observer’s Guide written by David Dickinson and Fraser Cain’s short explainer video about meteors in general is also very recommended. In short, if you have a reasonably clear view of the sky to the east and northeast, you are all set to go! You don’t even need any fancy equipment, just your eyes and some patience are enough.
When the Curiosity Rover arrived on Mars in 2012, I had put together a collection of useful links about the Mars missions, but I hadn’t updated it in a long time Recently, I got some questions about Mars on Google+ after posting one of the raw images from Curiosity and I think it’s time now for a revised edition of the link list so everyone can stay updated on their own. I originally started the list as a way provide all the information without having to write constantly about the Mars missions myself, something which others are doing much better. Nowadays I share all the space news on Google+ and specifically my Space and Astronomy Collection in addition to the WSH Crew Community. This is a completely redone edition of the link list, this time not only including NASA sites, but also the Mars missions from other agencies.
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It’s November 9 again and that means it’s time to almost forget about Carl Sagan Day like almost every year and get reminded by someone on the internet about it. Carl Sagan’s birthday should be celebrated especially on a day like this that will probably go down in history for something entirely else, which unfortunately also has before with quite a few negative historic connections here in Germany. Today it feels like we need to be reminded of something more positive and encouraging, so Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot seems to be entirely appropriate to read and listen to right now.
Sagan, who sadly passed away in 1996, has become more popular than ever since two years ago, when his seminal 1980 science blockbuster documentary Cosmos was re-imagined as Cosmos – A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil deGrasse Tyson, but with himself still very much part of it in spirit. Demystifiying science and invoking a sense of wonder that seems to be all but lost nowadays are still the most important goals every scientist, educator, teacher and everyone interested in science should have. This may be be even more important in the coming years in an increasingly science-unfriendly environment – sharing your own enthusiasm in all things science even if you’re not a scientist yourself is the best thing you can do. And that’s what I’m going to continue doing, too – we don’t need to turn everyone into a scientist, but spreading general scientific knowledge in the face of ignorance is more important than ever now.
This is the most political I’m ever going to get here, because one of my rules is not to write about politics on the web. I’m here for other things, but if science and politics intersect, exceptions are sometimes necessary.
It’s that time of year again – the Perseid Meteor Shower lottery is upon us! Will we see some meteors, or a LOT of meteors? Or will the curse strike us again? Everybody is talking about how great the meteor shower will be this year, but I’m very much in doubt that we will actually get to see them. The Perseids will peak on August 12 as usual, so the night from the 12th to the 13th will probably be the best chance to look for meteors, but generally the few days around the peak date are usually good too.
Unfortunately this year it looks like we won’t be able to see any meteors due to the absolutely abysmal weather we are having here in Germany at the moment – it’s not only raining buckets, but also very cold, so I’m afraid I’ll have to give the Perseids a miss this year. The only time I ever caught a Perseid meteor was in 2008 – I’ve been using that particular photo for all my Perseid posts.
If your weather looks good and you want to try watching, here are the usual links: If you want to know more about the Perseids, Universe Today has a really good Observer’s Guide written by David Dickinson and Fraser Cain’s short explainer video about meteors in general is also very recommended. In short, if you have a reasonably clear view of the sky to the east and northeast, you are all set to go! You don’t even need any fancy equipment, just your eyes and some patience are enough.
I’m sorry that I haven’t had much time for this blog lately – the reasons are in the previous post and while I’m slowly recovering, I have been very busy. Nevertheless, I have actually been somewhat active on the web elsewhere – I’m still posting daily on my Photography Blog and the WSH Crew Community Web Portal is also being updated regularly.
What I had to give up, though, is the weekly Space & Science News Roundup – it’s a lot of effort and I was thinking about retiring it anyway for some time. It was mainly a way to collect links for those who are not following my Google+ Space & Astronomy Collection or the WSH Crew Community because I unfortunately don’t have the time to crosspost to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. The Weekly Space Hangout, Astronomy Cast and Learning Space are also on summer break until early September, but if you want to stay up to date, you can also gather the news yourself from the same websites we like to visit.
Instead of a weekly posting, here is a list of space news sites, blogs and some of my Twitter lists for easy do-it-yourself news reading. I recommend using Feedly as a RSS reader for the websites – it is as easy to use as the old Google Reader and is supported by many apps on different platforms.
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This week’s round of space and science news is again a collection of articles posted in my Space & Astronomy Collection on Google+ and in the WSH Crew Community, plus a couple of additional ones that caught my attention. Does SpaceX take the headlines for a fourth week in a row? There were some news from the Dragon splashdown and the booster arrival, but I think Kepler wins this week with the announcement of over one thousand newly confirmed exoplanets and even nine in the habitable zone of their stars. A lot of other things have, of course, happened, but overall it has been somewhat quiet this week – except for a triple-feature hangout Friday! Check the playlists on our WSH Crew Website, there are two new episodes of Astronomy Cast and a great Weekly Space Hangout to watch!
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