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Astronomy Cast, episode 322. Soho.

Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Cane, I'm the publisher of University Day and with me is Dr. Pamela Gay, a professor at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and the director of Cosmic West. Hey, how are you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you doing today, Fraser?

Good, although it's early in the morning, for me, on the west coast.

Yeah, sorry, thank you. For those who don't know, I'm about to abandon the United States yet again and fly off to Indonesia via all airports in between here and there.

And give a talk at the Southeast Asian Astronomers Conference.

How long is the trip going to take you?

Yeah, it hurts. It's four hours from here to LA, then it's 16 hours to Hong Kong, and then it's six hours to Jakarta, and then it's a six hour bus ride to Bangdung.

Wow. Yeah.

But you could be streaming this live, although I guess when people hear this, it won't have already happened.

But anyway, they'll watch the YouTube channel.

Yeah, you can watch the YouTube channel. You can see what happened, and you're going to be what's the sort of purpose of the conference?

It's to basically bring together the youngest brightest astronomers from all throughout Southeast Asia and help give them a leg up on how to be successful in their careers as well they bring astronomy to these developing nations and very developed in some cases.

Right. But I mean, the great thing is, you know, as you can see what we're doing.

I mean, we use all these free tools to reach wide audiences around the world.

I live in Canada, you live in the States, the people in our teams are all around the world, and it doesn't matter.

Right. And what's going to be kind of awesome about this is I get to walk in and give the message, it no longer matters where you are.

There are things like money that are useful at really big universities.

But there's so much you can do for free right now.

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