With My Friends

I wasn’t around much this past week, at least online. I was, however, very much in attendance at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting, held at the University of Colorado in Boulder — my alma mater. The ASP is an international organization of people from more than 70 countries who teach and spread the news about astronomy and space science,  and related topics.  This year about 400 of us met to talk about astronomy, astronomy outreach methods (I taught a class on how to make podcasts, for example), climate science, and geological science.  It really was a great meeting and I had a wonderful time getting re-acquainted with old friends and making new ones.

I’ve been a member of ASP for quite a long time, and recently have been working with them to create podcasts about the science behind some of the news stories we see from time to time. The project is called Astronomy Behind the Headlines, and we’ve created seven so far.  Two more are in the pipeline, and we hope to do more in the near future.

Membership in ASP is like joining a group of your friends who are REALLY into spreading the news about the astronomy and all the sciences connected to it.  In this case, the friends include planetarium folk, teachers, public information officers at institutions (observatories, research groups, etc.), NASA people, and so forth. The sessions we attended ranged from the best ways to teach astronomy in the classroom, in informal settings, and through media presentations to a very fascinating talk about the discovery of the expansion of the universe, given by author Marcia Bartusiak (a long-time friend of mine), to a great talk about climate science.

There were sessions at Fiske Planetarium (where I once worked and where Mark and I got married) as well as a stargazing party and a wonderful banquet.  The sessions were good, the hallway conversations were amazing, and the people you meet are wonderful.

If you’re interested in advancing science literacy through astronomy — which is the ASP’s motto — then I suggest you join ASP, or at least send a few doubloons their way. They’re a worthy organization to belong to and support — and you’ll be supporting science literacy in the bargain! Go check ’em out at the link above!