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Planning the next .Astronomy
Carolina and I just got back from the UK, where we met up with the rest of the .Astronomy organisers to tie up some loose ends and discuss the future of our little workshop. With a few noted exceptions, participants as well as organisers seemed to enjoy the conference, and we’re keen to build on that success and put together another event in 2010. So that led us to some important questions: where, when, how and who?
I’ve just added an extra page with a bunch of links to projects and sites that fit well within the context of .Astronomy - open astronomy, astronomy in social media, citizen science, web-based outreach and education projects. I’ll maintain the list as well as I can, as things change and new projects are set up. Take a look and let me know if you have something to add.
Brilliant footage of the .Astronomy workshop by Ed & Hailey Gomez
The final day of .Astronomy was devoted to those who work to bring astronomy to a wider audience. As I’m still suffering with the .Astronomy bug, I’d just like to post a couple of videos from talks I particularly enjoyed.
Finally, thanks to everyone who came along to the meeting. It was fab.
Day 4 at .Astronomy was all about visualisation. Astronomy is arguably the most naturally photogenic of the sciences, even though we don’t know what much of the stuff out there actually is. As technological advances enable wider, deeper, higher-resolution observations, astronomical data become increasingly complex. But data is not knowledge, and the information we can extract from these large multi-dimensional datasets is limited by our ability to visualise and mentally process this complexity. Unfortunately, PhDs don’t give us extra powers over everyone else. Our minds are wired the same as everyone else’s – we just learn how to manipulate data and present them in novel ways that make them make sense to our limited brain.
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