A New Beginning

• By Sara Mitchell
• January 14, 2009
• 1 Comment

If you’ve visited Blueshift before, you’re probably wondering… hey, where have you been for the last year? We released six podcasts in 2007 but got a lot of mixed feedback from listeners about the content and structure. We decided to take some time off to re-think and get a better handle on our Blueshift audience and what they wanted. We asked questions – a lot of questions – and finally felt like we knew what you wanted us to create!

It seemed appropriate to tie our re-launch into the biggest astronomy project of 2009 – the International Year of Astronomy. IYA is a worldwide celebration of astronomy, in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first look through a telescope. The main goal for 2009 is to make people aware of and interested in astronomy, and we want Blueshift to bring you our stories about exploring the Universe at the Astrophysics Division at Goddard. Our education and outreach team is developing a variety of different activities for IYA throughout the year (which I will highlight in my blog from time to time), and Blueshift is a key piece of that.

We’re branching out from just a podcast to include a bunch of other content. Our podcast will come out twice a month, and we’ll also feature blogs from different people here, downloadable content like images and videos, and some surprises that you’ll just have to see! The site’s going to grow as we keep adding new content, so follow our RSS feed or check back regularly to see what’s new.

For our re-launch, I directed a podcast that celebrates another launch: last year’s launch of the Fermi Observatory. We actually talked about Fermi in one of our early episodes, when it was still known as GLAST. This time, I wanted to tell the story of why we study gamma rays bursts – and how – through the voices of several scientists involved in the field. One of our team members had the opportunity to interview leading experts in the field, and I turned those interviews into a story about these “biggest bangs since the big bang.”

Check out We’re Back!, released today!

It feels great to be back. So join us, throughout 2009 and beyond, to celebrate the Universe around us with Blueshift.