Bad Astronomy

Monster of the Milky Way

I suspect tomorrow will be a big news day what with the Hubble announcement and all, so I’ll take the time now to let y’all know that Tuesday (Halloween) night at 8:00 p.m. local time, PBS will air a NOVA program called “Monster of the Milky Way”. It’s about the search for supermassive black holes in other galaxies and at the center of our own.

I have not seen the show, but I’ve seen clips – the show was sponsored in part by the Gamma ray Large Area Space Telescope mission, and my group at Sonoma State University works on the education and public outreach arm of the mission. I wasn’t terribly involved with the NOVA show, but I did edit the script a wee bit, and it looks like it’ll be very cool, with amazing graphics, and good stuff from scientists involved with searching for black holes (including an old friend I went to grad school– hi Brian!). It’s a sort-of companion piece to the planetarium show we (the GLAST mission) helped develop as well, though both shows of course stand alone.

Too bad it’s on right when I’ll be expecting trick-or-treaters! Hopefully by 8:00 things will – haha – die down a bit, and I can watch the show. It’s broadcast in high-definition, which will be awesome, and will eventually be available for free download (in much lower res, of course) from the PBS website.