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About a month ago, I set forth the idea for an unofficial blog for Astronomy Stack Exchange. It's garnered some support so far for the idea, but we need to know that people are actually willing to contribute content to it. I don't know what we can put out, but maybe a post a week might be sustainable. If we were to get, say, four or five people working on it, then one post per person per month would be all that's needed.

If you think you'll be able to contribute, please write an answer below, ideally listing

  • What topics you think you might want to write about.
  • A conservative estimate of how often you might be able to write. Don't feel pressured to commit to anything yet.
  • Anything else you feel is relevant.

It's also fine if you don't write an answer and later end up contributing, but if you do think you'll contribute - well, that would be useful data.

I'll leave this featured for a week or so, then see where we're at.

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    $\begingroup$ @called2voyage It seems like we could maybe have one post every two weeks with the people we have so far. That seems not too bad, and hopefully not much of a burden on anyone. If things start rolling, we might be able to attract more writers - that's what's happened for Worldbuilding, at least. It could go in different ways. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Commented Dec 20, 2018 at 4:10
  • $\begingroup$ @HDE226868 I'm not so blog-literate; is it possible to describe range of word-lengths that's envisioned? How will the mechanics be similar or different than posting in SE? Will there be MathJax support? 2MB limits on images and animated GIFs? Do we write with markdown, html, google docs? Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 11:18
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh If we go with Medium, they have some details here. Essentially, for each post in a publication, you write a draft and submit it to the publication; an editor (so 1-2 people from our community) approves it and makes it public. There's basic markdown support, but no MathJax - and more info on the site. Finally, I'm imagining posts of 500-2000 words, but it does depend on the person who's writing it. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 15:47
  • $\begingroup$ I see, thanks for the quick reply, wow I've never written without having an equation editor handy, sounds like it will be a real challenge for me. I've just read How to write mathematics on Medium and the answer is unicode or images. At least they support code blocks. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Dec 31, 2018 at 15:52
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh It looks like Wordpress may have built-in LaTeX support in their free hosting solution! wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/15636 $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 0:31
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh It does render it as an image though, so it is similar to using one of the mathjax or LaTeX to image sites, but you wouldn't have to use an external resource. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 0:34
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh I'm actually pretty happy with the Wordpress implementation. It defaults to math mode. Wordpress keeps your LaTeX markup in the edit mode--you don't lose it after publishing. And, then of course, as I mentioned they put the markup in the alt text of the rendered image, which is good for accessibility! $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 20:35

6 Answers 6

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I would be willing to write about exoplanets, stellar imaging, and planetary formation. Most of what I would write would be derivative (I would read papers and compile/summarize), but I would provide a little perspective from my point of view as an aerospace software engineer and long-time astronomy fan.

I could probably only write maybe every few months, or maybe every other month.

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I might be able to write occasionally (a couple times a month if I'm lucky - when I have time I can write a lot but I generally swing between calmer and busier periods of time as tests come up in school or some such - but I can probably write a minimum of once a month).

While I'm not very active on astronomy, I am quite interested in it and already write on the Worldbuilding blog, mostly on science-y topics. For the astronomy blog, I could write a bit about planetary geology, a topic I'm currently interested in, and occasionally on interesting objects I've found (recently, for example, I've been reading about 'Oumuamua). I've already written one piece on the worldbuilding blog that's relevant to astronomy (on Boltzmann brains and entropy - a little more cosmology focused, perhaps) that I could revisit.

Disclaimer: I am most certainly not an expert; I am a highschool student.

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I can help with supernova related topics, machine learning in astronomy, and some other basic stuff. Once every two-three months seems possible for me.

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  • $\begingroup$ If there's a possibility you can write a blog post for March or a subsequent month, please drop by chat. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ Or if you can't make chat for some reason, let me know and if there's still an opening for March we could work something out. You can also let me know months after March you'd be willing to write for, if you know this far in advance. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 20:00
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I think I could contribute about a post per month, at least for the foreseeable future (after that, maybe more). I might write some posts the way called2voyage mentioned - deconstructing and analyzing papers - but I think I could also talk a bit about astronomy research from an undergrad's perspective (I'm not sure how interesting that could be; we'll see). The main subjects I'd like to write about would be massive stars and topics related to pulsar timing, but I could also diversify a bit. An astronomy seminar I'm taking in the spring on stars might lead to interesting material.

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While I'm not an expert in anything, I can write things on several topics that are at least mostly not wrong. I could perhaps write something once a month, but it's hard to say without understanding what the process is. Is there a proposal step first, a review of on-topic-ness and quality, or is it more like SE where we just open a window, type into it, and push Post your blogpost?

If it's possible to find some posts that can be thought of as examples of the quality, length, and style imagined (content of examples not so relevant) it would be easier to gauge.

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  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage I've removed the MathJax comment, maybe clean up comments? Also, re the last sentence, I still don't understand things like length and content, do we submit proposals? Or are there invitations? Do you need something soon? Or should I just wait for a few posts to appear to see first hand what it's like? $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Jan 25, 2019 at 10:10
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh No hard limits on length or content at this point. If you're interested, we'll add you as a contributor at the blog and look over what you type up before publishing it. Yes, we do have to invite you, but in theory open to anyone who is interested--but no guarantee of publication. We don't need anything soon. As before, if you want to wait until some posts are up before deciding, that's fine too. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jan 28, 2019 at 21:58
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage okay then let's wait a bit; thanks. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Jan 28, 2019 at 23:44
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I could maybe write for your blog, covering gravity and cosmological subjects. I did some blogging a few years back for James Delingpole. See stuff like this:

https://bogpaper.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/science-on-sunday-with-john-duffield-dark-matter/

More recently I've been writing a blog of my own, see http://physicsdetective.com/. I could maybe do some cut-down simplified versions of some of the articles I've already written. Or some new articles. It might be an idea if you came up with a list of articles and asked different people to write them.

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