It’ll be upon us before we know it: 2009 is less than three months away! It will be the International Year of Astronomy and as part of the festivities, a new podcast is being launched. Every day, a new episode of 365 Days of Astronomy will become available for your listening pleasure. Each edition will be created by a different person, or group of people from all over the world offering their own unique perspective. Who might you hear? Well, you, for a start!

To volunteer to make your mark and record your very own episode of this epic, podcast endeavour, you only need to register on the newly launched 365 Days of Astronomy website. After that, click on ‘Join In’ and follow the instructions.

365 Days of Astronomy represents a great challenge and it should be brilliant to tune in each day and hear something completely new and interesting. It is vital that as many people, from as many parts of the world get signed up. So ask your school, youth group, badminton club, football team, decorators and anyone else to take a look and think about having a go.

Podcasting is easier that you might think and to be part of this exciting global initiative would be something you’d remember forever. So whether you’re 1 or 100, 365 Days of Astronomy is waiting for you. The website will also be giving tips on podcasting and will be doing everything they can to make sure the process is reasonably simply and easy to do.

I am running a conference in September and I’m inviting astronomers and astronomy bloggers from anywhere! If you’re interested in how astronomy and the internet can combine to produce new and interesting tools for research and communication then this conference is for you.

Astronomy is facing a paradigm shift. The huge quantities of data that are being created by a new generation of surveys and instruments will require new ways of thinking. At the same time, an ever-more connected world is bringing astronomy to the masses via a new media, made up of blogs, podcasts, social networks and more.

Google Sky and Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope have taken astronomy into the home with stunning elegance. Data mining, robotic telescopes and virtual observatories will soon take petabytes of data to a global audience of professionals and amateurs.

Communication and networking technologies are changing science, for both researchers and the public alike. The .astronomy conference will discuss the ideas and methods emerging in this new era and the way in which they present interesting and novel opportunities for both conducting and communicating astronomy.

We have invited several notable people to speak at the conference (including fellow bloggers Chris, Stuart, Pamela, Phil and Emily) and I’m pleased to say that the confirmations have begun coming in. I will be blogging once in a while via Orbiting Frog, but mainly the news and updates will be posted on the conference webpage (RSS).

The conference will run from Monday 22nd to Wednesday 24th September 2008. It will take place at Cardiff University. To read more or to pre-register please visit our website or follow the .astronomy Twitter feed.

Trailers seem to be the ‘in thing’ these days. There is a (very long) trailer for the BLAST experiment’s movie somewhere out on the internet. Today, this very nice trailer popped up in my Twitter feed from Stuart at Astronomy Blog. It’s for the International Year of Astronomy, also known as 2009. This is going be lots of fun and will with any luck also be when I graduate my PhD. The video is below, or via this link for other formats.