Category: Blog

Just in case there are some marketers out there, I wanted to let you all know that you can advertise here in Universe Today, in the Astronomy Cast podcast in the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today forum and other places. If you’re wondering how you can reach almost a million space enthusiasts every month, check out the advertising page. Great demographics and competitive rates. And it’s not just banner advertising either, we can come up with all kinds of clever ideas to help you reach the right audience, including giveaways and interactive programs. Drop me an email at [email protected] with your needs and I can get back to you with some ideas.

You might have forgotten, but the big Lunar and Planetary Society Conference is happening all this week in Houston – from these conferences come mountains of space news. Once again, the intrepid blogging team is bringing the conference to you (sort of live), with articles, audio, video, and photographs. Pamela and Rebecca are at the conference, and at the same time, we’ve got Scott Miller over at Cape Canaveral to cover the next launch of the space shuttle. And I’m back and Mission Control: Vancouver, reporting on all the news pouring out that they’ll be too busy to cover. It should be a very interesting week.

I’ll have reports here on Universe Today, but the best place is to go to our Astronomy Cast LIVE blog, where you’ll see posts from all the contributors.

Click here to visit Astronomy Cast LIVE.

And if you want to meet Pamela and Rebecca, there’s going to be having another listener meetup on Tuesday, 8pm at San Lorenzo’s. Here’s a link to a map.

Have you ever tried to point out the constellations to a friend? You huddle up close, point your arm out, and both of you try to locate the star you’re looking at. “See that star? Right there? Now down a little, no, not that one. It’s on the left… never mind, there’s the Moon over there.” I had a chance to play with a green laser pointer from techlasers.com, and let me tell you, that problem goes away once and for all.

The laser I received is the Infinity 125 mW laser from techlasers and it retails for $289.00 USD. But they also have lower watt lasers right down to 15 mW (for $79.00).

All their Infinity series are the size of a large pen. You can easily clip this in your shirt pocket, and whip it out when you need to clear up a constellation conundrum.

As long as you’re using the laser for good, it’s awesome. You point up into the sky, press the trigger, and a finger of light stretches from your hand to infinity. Instead of standing beside someone, with your arm outstretched, trying to point out a specific, dim object in the sky, you can just reach out and point to it.

I’m not kidding. Zap, your laser reaches out to a specific star. There’s Venus, that’s Mars. Zap… that’s Andromeda.

It only takes 2 AAA batteries, and I’ve been using it for the better part of a month now, amazing my friends and entertaining my children, and it hasn’t run out of batteries yet.

I’ve tested it around the house, and the spot where the laser hits the wall is almost too bright to look at. You can easily see the spot on a building a few miles away, and I’m sure distant aliens are squinting their eyes from the light when you beam it at their star (okay, not really). I’m sure my neighbours are wondering what that green beam is stretching up from my house.

I’ve got to say, though, it feels a bit like owning a firearm. I keep the laser out of reach of the kids, and make sure that we only use it with my supervision. I can imagine it would seriously damage someone’s eyes if you weren’t careful.

But if you’re a responsible person, and you keep it away from airplanes flying overhead, I would say that a green laser is a great way to share your love of astronomy with your friends.

Check out Pamela’s review over at StarStryder, where she breaks out the math to calculate how powerful the laser is.

And then take a look at techlasers for their full gallery of lasers.

Sure, it’s quiet for space news right now, but just you wait. Astronomers from across the US are gathering together here in Austin, Texas to meet and announce their latest findings at the Winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. There are going to be dozens of big announcements, and literally hundreds of papers presented.

I’m here at the conference, and I’m going to try and bring you as much of this news as is humanly possible. So don’t be surprised if your feed reader starts to bog down with news, and you get gigantic email news updates from Universe Today.

The press conferences start Tuesday, January 8th, so don’t expect much between now and then.

Pamela, Phil and I are going to be doing an experiment this year as well. We’ll be liveblogging some of the big press events, capturing live video, and generally trying to give you all a sense of what it’s like to be here at the meeting.

So if you’re interested in catching our live updates, we’re going to have a special section of Astronomy Cast that you can check out. Just point your browser to astronomycast.com/live. We’ll have frequent updates during the meeting.

And one last reminder. If you’re actually here in Austin and want to meet the Astronomy Cast team and Dr. Phil Plait, we’re going to be having a reader meetup at the Iron Cactus on Tuesday night. Click here for more info.