Virtual Star Parties

staff-blog-post

Posted By Emily Lakdawalla

2012/06/28 12:02 CDT

Topics: podcasts and videos, amateur astronomers, optical telescopes, astronomy

For a while now, Fraser Cain has been conducting Cosmoquest "Virtual Star Parties" through Google+ hangouts. There's a regularly scheduled one every Sunday evening ("no earlier than 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern / 3am + 1d GMT / 2pm +1d Sydney") but they seem to conduct impromptu ones quite a bit more frequently than that.

This is just one of three regular Cosmoquest Google+ hangouts. The other two are the Weekly Science Hangout that I or Pamela conduct on Wednesdays (4pm PDT / 7pm EDT / 2300 UT), in which we interview one scientist or engineers; and the Space Hangout hosted by Fraser with a slew of other space bloggers (including, occasionally, me) on Thursdays at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 1700 UT. In fact, this would probably be a good time to mention that I'm planning to participate in tomorrow's Space Hangout. Tune in at cosmoquest.org/Hangouts.

But the reason I'm posting now is because of this awesome promotional video produced by Google, an abbreviated version of which keynote speaker Vic Gondotra showed during the keynote speech at their mega-popular developer conference, Google I/O. Way to go, Fraser!