Starship Asterisk*

I plan to present a poster presentation featuring Starship Asterisk at the 2011 January meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). As the abstract deadline is today, I have yesterday and today composed a title and abstract which might be of interest to Asterickians. It has not yet been submitted. If anyone has any comments or correcions, please feel free to post them in reply to this post. If suggested changes are made before 4 pm EDT, I would be able to include them in the abstract.

- RJN

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Starship Asterisk: APOD and General Astronomy Discussion Forum

Author: RJN

A main discussion venue for the popular Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website has been recently redesigned and upgraded. The online bulletin board is directly linked from the bottom of recent APODs served from http://apod.nasa.gov/ . Formerly known as "The Asterisk", the site's new design is called "Starship Asterisk" and now declares its forums to be places on a starship, with the current APOD considered as appearing on the main view screen on the Bridge. A central "mission" of Starship Asterisk is to support APOD in various ways. Toward this end, the Bridge forum exists primarily for the (archived) discussion of that day's APOD, the Observation Deck forum facilitates APOD image submissions, and the Library forum creates an forum where no student question about astronomy is considered to be too easy or too hard. Additionally, Starship Asterisk now includes an astronomy news-oriented links forum titled the Communications Center, a citizen-science oriented links collection called the Science Labs, and classrooms including a free online, textbook-free Astro 101 course, taught by the author, complete with video lectures and powerpoint slides. Typically, over 1,000 astronomy enthusiasts will browse Starship Asterisk on any given day. Although the vast majority of readers prefer to browse anonymously, the site has now garnered over 60,000 posts. A small but dedicated group of volunteer "officers" administer the bulletin board, answer questions about astronomy from curious APOD readers, and openly discuss various astronomy topics, frequently with intended humor. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of volunteer officers tend NOT to be professional astronomers, but typically quite knowledgeable retirees exercising a lifelong interest in astronomy.

Hi RJN, do you think it might be good to include that a number of very good amateur Astronomers are now posting their pictures in the Asterisk also?

Oooo, what a great idea, beyond!

RJN, sounds like a fun presentation to pull together! It looks good to me. Perhaps consider a couple of changes...

• "the Bridge forum exists primarily for the (archived) discussion of that day's APOD"
  
  Perhaps better might be "the Bridge forum exists primarily for the discussion of each day's APOD"
  
  Sticking in the "(archived)" if needed where you have it, or perhaps after "each day's APOD" could be "and providing an archive for previous discussions." (or "earlier discussions")
• "and the Library forum creates an forum where no student question about astronomy is considered to be too easy or too hard."
  
  The repeat of "forum" perhaps could be avoided. Maybe "an area where no student question..." might be better? If kept the way it is, the "an" should be changed to "a".

And depending on the style guide used by AAS, this might need fixing:

"The Asterisk",

Generally in the US, that should be "The Asterisk," with the comma inside the quotes; in Britain, it is as you originally wrote it.

And (sorry) this:

citizen-science oriented

should be

"citizen science-oriented" just as you have "astronomy news-oriented" earlier. (But this can depend on the style guide, too.)

I'll stop now!

THE OWL is back! YA-WHOOOOOO

Thanks, beyond! I'm happy to be back!