Social Networking for Astronomers
Social Networking for Astronomers
By Bill Pellerin
Houston Astronomical Society
GuideStar Editor
You think that social networking on the Internet is only used by those who want to chit-chat about what they had for breakfast? Think again. Social networking covers a lot of ground and there is plenty of material that is of interest to astronomers. Think of this as a new mode of communications. We’ve had web sites and email for a while, but these communications capabilities allow astronomers, and others, to communicate with large groups of people in near real time.
A lot of astronomy clubs, including my home club – the Houston Astronomical Society, are working on attracting new members and are taking advantage of as many communication avenues as possible, including social networks. Professional observatories, working on public outreach as part of their mission, are also using social networking as a tool to communicate with other professionals and with the public.
These are great times for astronomy enthusiasts who want to keep up with what’s going on. The problem may be that there is too much information coming our way. You have to be selective about what you pay attention to. If you are a lunar and planetary observer, information on that subject may get your attention. If you are a double star observer, you will pay attention to information on that subject.
Social Networking for Astronomers
By Bill Pellerin
Houston Astronomical Society
GuideStar Editor
You think that social networking on the Internet is only used by those who want to chit-chat about what they had for breakfast? Think again. Social networking covers a lot of ground and there is plenty of material that is of interest to astronomers. Think of this as a new mode of communications. We’ve had web sites and email for a while, but these communications capabilities allow astronomers, and others, to communicate with large groups of people in near real time.
A lot of astronomy clubs, including my home club – the Houston Astronomical Society, are working on attracting new members and are taking advantage of as many communication avenues as possible, including social networks. Professional observatories, working on public outreach as part of their mission, are also using social networking as a tool to communicate with other professionals and with the public.
These are great times for astronomy enthusiasts who want to keep up with what’s going on. The problem may be that there is too much information coming our way. You have to be selective about what you pay attention to. If you are a lunar and planetary observer, information on that subject may get your attention. If you are a double star observer, you will pay attention to information on that subject.
For the purposes of this article, I’m only going to give you the very basics of what you need to get started and a list of the information sources you can find on two social networks. The two services that I will recommend to you are Facebook and Twitter. (LinkedIn is more associated with business professionals, but you’ll find some astronomical material there as well.)
If all this seems a bit difficult to understand, there’s no obligation to become an expert at either of these services to enjoy and make use of them. I am not an expert, I don’t spend a lot of time on these sites, but I know enough to introduce you to these services. If you want to develop more expertise on using these sites, your bookstore will have quite a few books that will help you. I was at my bookstore last night and found several books on each of these sites.
On Twitter, you and others ‘tweet’ short (140 characters max) statements on any subject that is of interest to you. You get a list of ‘tweets’ from everyone you ‘follow’ (listen to). Many, if not most, of the ‘tweets’ include a link to a web site or a photo for more information. It’s a bit like ‘instant messaging’ except that instead of being a one-to-one communication it’s a one to many communication.
Another way to think of it – you’re in a room with everyone you’ve selected to ‘follow’ and, from time to time, each of these persons makes a short comment about what is going on with him or her.
Let’s look at Twitter in more detail. If you do not have a Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com and set one up. It’s easy to do this and it is free, so even if you decide later that you do not want to continue using Twitter you can deactivate your account from the ‘settings’ page. Once you have created the account you have to ‘follow’ some person or some entity to receive the ‘tweets’ that this person/entity writes. Becoming a follower is easy. Click on ‘Find People’ at the top right of the screen and type in the name of a person or entity you want to ‘follow’. Type in, for example, ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson’, without the quotes, then click the [Search] button. When you see him, listed as NeilTyson, click the [Follow] button, and that’s it. You’re now following Neil deGrasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium). You do not need permission to ‘follow’ any person or entity on Twitter. Anything posted on Twitter is open to anyone who wants to read it. You can limit who reads your ‘tweets’; get a book on Twitter if you want to know all the details.
Here are some other names of people/things that you can follow on Twitter. The word or words before the dash are what you need to enter in the ‘Find People’ dialog to ‘follow’ these people/things.
Astronomy Cast – Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay – creators of the AstronomyCast podcast
Starstryder – Dr. Pamela Gay
NASASpacePlace – public outreach from NASA
Elakdawalla – Emily Lakdawalla of the Lunar and Planetary Institute
GalaxyZoo – Engaging the public in categorizing galaxies
BadAstronomer – Dr. Phil Plait – Author of Bad Astronomy
Celestron – telescope maker
MeadeInstrument – telescope maker
SkyandTelescope – magazine
AstronomyMag – magazine
Astro_Mike – Mike Massimino, astronomer
NASA_Hubble
Apod – Astronomy Picture of the Day
NASAKepler – the Kepler mission to find Earth-like planets
Look around and you’ll find plenty more to follow.
I have not yet mentioned the obvious — that with your Twitter account you can ‘tweet’ as well. Enter your 140 characters or less in the ‘What’s Happening’ box and click the [Tweet] button. All your followers will get that message. Don’t have any followers? You will, and it is likely that you will not know most of them, so if this makes you a bit uncomfortable there is a ‘Protect my Tweets’ setting that lets you limit who can see your ‘tweets’. (Do your best to make your ‘tweets’ interesting to others.)
A lot of ‘tweets’ include links to web pages. This is quite nice because you learn what the subject is in the ‘tweet’ but you can get more detail by clicking on the link.
One more thing. There is a ‘search’ box on the right side of your home screen. Sometimes, there is something going on that lots of people are ‘tweeting’ about, even people you are not following. In their ‘tweet’ they will use what is called a hash tag. The hash character is this one: #. This is not a character you normally use in daily conversation so it is used to assist in subject searches. Today, as I write this is international Observe the Moon Night. The hash tag being used for this event is ‘#InOMN10’. If you enter this in the [Search] box and click the image of the magnifying glass you will see the most recent ‘tweets’ that include this hash tag. It is a way to keep up with a subject instead of a person.
When you open Facebook you see a ‘News Feed’ page. This page shows items that your Facebook ‘friends’ have posted on their site. I use Facebook to keep up with current (real life) friends, old friends, relatives, neighborhood issues, as well as astronomy related goings-on.
Facebook also functions as a personal home page that you can very easily update with new information. Facebook lets you tell other people (‘friends’) what you are doing and comment on the postings of your friends. It is more about communicating among friends and relatives than is Twitter. There is no character limit to what you put on your page.
Like Twitter, Facebook is free at www.facebook.com. One significant difference between the two services is that on Twitter you can ‘follow’ anyone; you do not (usually) need their permission to do so. On Facebook you can only get all the details on someone if you are their ‘friend’ and you have to ask them for permission to be their Facebook ‘friend’. Use the ‘search’ box at the top of the screen to find people who you want to keep track of.
Here are some entities / people who are on Facebook. Keep in mind that for some of these, you can only ‘like’ the Facebook page, you can’t add the page as a ‘friend’ (the ‘Palomar Observatory’ Facebook site is an example of this).
McDonald Observatory
Mauna Kea Observatory
Palomar Observatory
George Observatory
Siding Spring Observatory
Slacker Astronomy
Astronomy Cast
Like Twitter, there are plenty of other interesting things on Facebook. Who knows, you may even connect with some long-lost-relatives or high school friends this way.
See you on the Internet.