Cosmic Diary Logo

Meet the astronomers. See where they work. Know what they know.


The Project:

The Cosmic Diary is not just about astronomy. It's more about what it is like to be an astronomer.

The Cosmic Diary aims to put a human face on astronomy: professional scientists will blog in text and images about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, their latest research findings and the challenges that face them. The bloggers represent a vibrant cross-section of female and male working astronomers from around the world, coming from five different continents. Outside the observatories, labs and offices they are musicians, mothers, photographers, athletes, amateur astronomers. At work, they are managers, observers, graduate students, grant proposers, instrument builders and data analysts.

Throughout this project, all the bloggers will be asked to explain one particular aspect of their work to the public. In a true exercise of science communication, these scientists will use easy-to-understand language to translate the nuts and bolts of their scientific research into a popular science article. This will be their challenge.

Task Group:

Mariana Barrosa (Portugal, ESO ePOD)
Nuno Marques (Portugal, Web Developer)
Lee Pullen (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
André Roquette (Portugal, ESO ePOD)

Jack Oughton (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
Alice Enevoldsen (USA, Pacific Science Center)
Alberto Krone Martins (Brazil, Uni. S. Paulo / Uni. Bordeaux)
Kevin Govender (South Africa, S. A. A. O.)
Avivah Yamani (Indonesia, Rigel Kentaurus)
Henri Boffin (Belgium, ESO ePOD)

Happy New Year - future of this blog?

I did not write on this blog for almost 15 days. The vacation time came shortly after the AGU meeting and I basically spent a lot of time with my family. So this post is primarily written to wish all of you a Great New Year 2010 and to give you news about the future of this blog.I don’t have an official response yet from the curators of this blog (Mariana Barrosa) but apparently several of us are willing to continue this blog. Even if the IYA2009 is soon over, we think that this initiative should be continued, since it generated a lot of interest from you. In my case, it also allowed me to send a few more time sharing my passion for my work and I hopefully give you a glimpse of the life of an astronomer.

I have a lot of articles that I did not publish yet in my draft folder, about Adaptive Optics (part II and part III), SOFIA telescope, the Decadal survey presented at the AGU Fall Conference, a new instrument that I am working on for Lick Shane Telescope, a space mission concept to explore multiple asteroids and so on… I will most likely publish them in the following days. Hopefully there are still some readers for this blog. :-) My goal for 2010 is to post shorter articles, more regularly and on broader topics than astronomy.

Wishing you a great new year 2010,

Franck M.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3
  1. Harsh Agrawal
    January 2nd, 2010 at 9:32 pm

    Thanks and Happy new year to you and everyone ..

  2. Philip
    January 7th, 2010 at 10:29 am

    Feliz Ano nuevo and we’re looking forward to see the Cosmic Diary continue in 2010…

  3. Desh
    January 25th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    Yes Frank, we are here,
    Keep posting, this has indeed paved a way to have a better perspective on an insight of an astronomer during the course of a year !!