This may surprise you, but the content is pretty much Not Safe For Work. Yeah, I know: I’m not generally known for that. But hey– it’s an astronomy talk! What better place to go a little blue?

The video is in two parts; the first has the last couple of minutes of the warmup before my talk (I came on after the intermission), and the second part includes the premier of the trailer for my new TV show. The reaction of the audience was… well. It made me happy indeed.

Here are both parts. Part 1…

… and Part 2:

That last slide with the Hubble image says, "W00tstock: Where no astronomer has gone before."

I want to make sure I give plenty of credit Amanda Bauer, aka AstroPixie, once again for her inspiration for this talk. It’s something I’d been thinking of doing for a long time, but her blog post really got things started. Way-hey. Giggity.

There are pictures going up about w00tstock all over the place, so check with Flickr to see ‘em. And also, please read Wil Wheaton’s thoughtful and wonderful words about that night.

Thanks also to Kevin Savino Riker for posting that video. One of the beautiful things about w00tstock is that everything is licensed under the Creative Commons theme, which means it can posted publicly. Why? Because like Wil, Adam, Paul & and Storm, I agree that things like this get better the more they are shared, and become more valuable when they cost less. Or nothing at all.

[Brief update: Julia Sherred has many more w00tstock videos on her blog.]

About a hundred years ago, two astronomers plotted the brightness of stars against their color (from blue to red) and what they found was amazing: a clear connection between the two! In fact, stars fell into several groups, and over the years we’ve learned about why that happens. Most stars are stable, like the Sun, and fall into the Main Sequence of the plot. Some are old, some young, some dying, some dead. And they all have their place in what we now call the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, or H-R diagram for short. It’s one of the most useful tools astronomers have ever created.

And now my friend Stuart who runs Astronomy Blog has done it one better: he’s created an H-R diagram of media stars. It’s awesome:

That’s really funny, and I wish I had thought of it. The vertical axis is fame, as denoted by Google results, and the horizontal axis is peer-reviewed papers. I’m actually only first author on I think two papers, but I was listed as author on a lot due to my work on Hubble. So I do OK on this diagram. I note that Brian Cox is more luminous than me, but then, he’s an actual rock star. If there were a branch for white main sequence stars, he and I would be in a dead heat.

Next up, I hope: a space-time diagram showing warping due to massive astronomers.

Finally, at last, after many months, I can now officially reveal the Sooper Sekrit Project that has kept me so busy over all this time. I think you’re gonna like this… so why not just jump right in to the teaser trailer posted online by a small TV network you may have heard of called THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

[evil laugh]

How ’bout that?

I’ve been working with the Discovery Channel on hosting a new TV science show called "Phil Plait’s Bad Universe". It’s a three-part program where I dissect issues in astronomy and science, putting claims to the test. There’s no air date yet, but I’m hoping it’ll be on your TV sets this fall.

As you can see in the trailer, the first episode is about asteroid impacts, and we tackle the issue in a way that I don’t think has been done on TV. I get right into the mix, blowing things up, flying in a jet, going where the action is so that I can participate in experiments with scientists and try to find out what works and what doesn’t. The idea here is not to have some dry, narrated documentary. Instead I will show you what’s going on, take you along, so that you can see how these things work and what we’re doing to investigate these issues.

I’ve been having a tremendous time filming this, flying around the country, seeing things I ordinarily would never get to see. And the beauty is, you can come too!

Eventually I’ll post some pictures I’ve taken on this adventure, and we’ll be posting more video online as well as more information about the show soon. I’d like to thank everyone at Discovery Channel and Morningstar Entertainment for giving me this chance to fulfill a long-standing dream of mine. We’ve worked very hard on this program, and I hope you like it.

Yay!