Link here, please!

Since this blog is by nature very short-lived, it needs to become known very quickly in order to have a readership that makes writing worthwhile for myself and potential other authors . Please link here, if you are interested in astronomy!

(There is no commercial interest and there will be no advertising)

Invitation: Blog here!

I hereby invite all attendees at the IAU General Assembly to join this blog and write about their impressions and thoughts during this meeting. This site would become much more interesting, if we could become a group of serveral people from different fields of astronomy that attend different parts of the conference.

I suppose the only practical mode of operation is that you have your own laptop and make use of the wireless network that is supposed to exist in the conference center. That is my own intention anyway.

To be able to write here, you simply write an email to me (tmarqar (at) astro.uu.se) and ask for invitation. Then you will get an email that lets you create an account at Blogger.com (if you do not already have one) and become added to this blog. Then you are ready to publish here.

Looking forward to your emails!

Mission Statement

This blog will be a temporary enterprise. I will attend the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union that takes place in Prague, Czech Republic, from August 14 to 25, and blog from there.

It will be a big event with hundreds, if not thousands of astronomers that are spread over different symposia and sub-conferences. I will only participate during the first week and mainly listen to the talks in Symposium 235 which is dubbed "Galaxy Evolution across the Hubble Time".

The main focus of this blog will be on astronomical results and news and I expect much interesting stuff to happen at this meeting. Postings may or may not require some background in astronomy and will probably consist in short comments and summaries that are not meant to be self-contained and complete. There might as well be some notes and reminders for myself.

I shortly considered blogging anonymously, maybe to be able to tell my "real opinion" about speakers and presentations without the fear of negative consequences for my future life in astronomy. Then I realised that astronomers usually are reasonably good at taking critics, that I do not intend to scathe anyone anyway and that I have no problem taking the responsibility for what I say or write. :-)

Therefore, some quick facts about myself: My name is Thomas Marquart and I am enrolled as a PhD-student in the Galaxy Group at the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in Sweden. Since this blog will not be about myself, this should suffice.