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Astronomy Cast Episode 168 from Monday, December 14, 2009, in Rico, Fairement.

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 Kane, I'm the publisher of University Day, and with me is Dr. Pamela Gaia Professor at Southern Illinois University, Evertsville.

Hello, Pamela.

Hey Fraser, how's it going?

It's going very well.

I think we got one interesting announcement for the new year, which is that we now have another organization that we fall underneath.

Right, so for the past year and a half, since right before the International Year of Astronomy started, we kind of realized that there's a lot of us doing new media projects that, well, it would be good if we all had one home, one umbrella that we could fit under.

So, you and I, along with Phil Plate and the US single point of contact for the International Year of Astronomy, Douglas Spell and one of our local faculty members, Tom Foster.

And with help from Crystal and Todd, who does Galaxy Zoo, we established a new nonprofit called Astrosphere New Media, which anyone can learn about at astrosphere.org.

And this is a new way to get your donations to making new media happen, tax deductible, and your donations will help this show.

And there's also links to 365 days of astronomy to the IYA Second Life Island and to a number of other projects that were involved with.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're still recovering from the dizzying amount of bureaucracy and paperwork that was required to actually make this happen.

And now we can move on to the actual fun part where we come up with projects and get involved.

I mean, I think we're both really committed to helping people learn about astronomy, giving people who've never had a chance to look through a telescope, helping them learn more, and just kind of taking the, taking the word out and showing people why we think astronomy is great.

So we've got astronomy cast, we've got astronomy 365, we've got other projects that we're going to be working on.

And this is sort of a way to kind of keep it all held together and a way that people can donate and get involved. So stay tuned.

And this is just one more way that we're going to keep the international near of astronomy's legacy maintained into the future.

And I cannot explain how good it is to have that experience behind me.

And all the context. No, it's great. What a year.

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