A) POPULAR ASTRONOMY LECTURES CAN BE SEEN ON YOUTUBE
We are happy to announce that the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, featuring noted scientists giving nontechnical illustrated lectures on recent developments in astronomy, are now available on their own YouTube Channel, at: http://www.youtube.com/SVAstronomyLectures/
The talks include:
* Frank Drake discussing his modern view of the Drake Equation,
* Michael Brown explaining how his discovery of Eris led to the demotion of Pluto,
* Alex Filippenko talking about the latest ideas and observations of black holes,
* Natalie Batalha sharing the latest planet discoveries from the Kepler mission,
* Anthony Aguirre discussing how it is possible to have multiple universes, and
* Chris McKay updating the Cassini discoveries about Saturn’s moon Titan.
The lectures are taped at Foothill College near San Francisco, and co-sponsored by NASA’s Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Note that the top page of the channel shows the lectures in the order they happened to be uploaded to YouTube. If you want to see them in chronological order, select the Playlist option.
Both new and older talks in the series will be added to the channel as time goes by. Many noted astronomers have given talks in this series since its founding in 1999; recent lectures are being recorded so that people around the world can “tune in.”
We appreciate your sharing this information with colleagues, students, and interested astronomy enthusiasts.
Andrew Fraknoi, Chair, Astronomy Program
B) GUIDE TO RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT EXOPLANETS
A new annotated guide to written, web, and audio-visual resources for teaching about planets orbiting other stars is now available for high-school and college instructors, their students, informal educators, and astronomy enthusiasts. Materials in the guide to this rapidly-changing branch of astronomy include video and audio files of lectures and interviews with leading scientists in the field, phone and tablet apps, a citizen-science web site, popular-level books and articles, and much more.
Published by the NASA Astrophysics Education and Outreach Forum and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the guide can be found as a PDF file at: