Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21715803n&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #158.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
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 creates a 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.
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