Hi Folks,
I've been toying with the idea of creating an Astronomy Podcast for several months now. For those who don't know, a Podcast is like an Internet based radio program, that, through software, you can subscribe to, and have downloaded to your computer/mp3 player automatically when new episodes are released.
There are quite a few Astronomy podcasts already, and I don't want to re-invent the wheel. Most howver are interviews and/or technical discussions of specific astronomical events, plus several with general current observational information.
My aim is to produce something light and entertaining for the casual astronomer, with hopefully useful information for the more knowledgable astronomers as well. The main focus would be a summary of weekly astronomy news, and then after that whatever content is appropriate, which would include things like software & web site reviews, other astronomy podcast reviews/highlights, historical event recounts, famous astonomer biographies, current sky & upcoming events/highlights, Q&A from listeners and maybe a smattering of podsafe music as well.
I have several choices for the news format, such as
- a fast 2-5 minute news flash of every possible story type format
- a slower 10 - 15 minute editorial discussion of the most important news items
- an in-depth discussion on 1 or 2 items (which is what everyone else is doing)
So, after that brain dump, I'm interested to hear feedback from you guys addressing the following
- How many people listen to Astronomy Podcasts and which ones?
- How long is too long, and how short is too short?
- How often would you like to get news information - daily/weekly/monthly?
- Do you normally listen while observing, or somewhere else?
- Are you interested in current observational information as well as news? (I personally have a problem with this due to geographic locations providing different views)
- Do you feel there is already too many astronomy podcasts and another one would not contribute anything useful?
- Do you have any other suggestions for another format you would like to see?
Comments on any of the above would be greatly appreciated.
Russell.