Virtual Star Parties, More Astronomers Needed

For those of you following me on Google+, you know that I’ve been hosting virtual star parties with Phil Plait and Pamela Gay. We’ve teamed up with astronomer Mike Phillips who has been livestreaming his telescopes into a Google+ Hangout and then broadcasting it live so everyone can watch. So, it’s sort of like looking through an amazing telescope, but with color commentary from us at the same time.

It’s been an amazing experience so far, but I know it can be even better. I need to find more astronomers able to livestream the view from their telescopes into a webcam and then into a Google+ Hangout. I’d like to have multiple telescopes going at the same time, with different views of the skies. Some focused on planets, others at deep sky objects.

And it doesn’t have to be big telescopes. There are beautiful objects in the sky, like open clusters, which look better with a wider field of view.

So, if you’re interested in participating, you’ll need to have a way to get the view from your telescope, into a webcam, and then use that webcam to join a Google+ Hangout. If you can do that, drop me an email at info@universetoday.com and we’ll run some tests.

Here are two previous nights of experiments that we’ve done so far.

Virtual Star Party – January 6th, 2012

Virtual Star Party – January 5th, 2012