Writers Bureau

Nearly every astronomy club and society in the world publishes a monthly newsletter as a benefit of membership. These range from one or two page notices of upcoming events and meetings, to full blown news publications with articles, color images, calendars, sky maps and advertising.

Many of the editors of these newsletters scramble for content each month to fill the pages of their publications. Many use the articles supplied by NASA to fill out their pages. In fact, I see the same article in a bunch of newsletters each month. There's nothing wrong with that, but wouldn't a little variety and choice be a good thing?

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) has an education and outreach program you just might be interested in, The AAVSO Writer's Bureau.

We have partnered with some of the best astronomy bloggers on the Internet and made an arrangement to bring their content to you for reproduction in your newsletters. We have obtained permission for you to download and use this content when you want, as often as you please, for your astronomy club publications, FREE!

Pick one article each month or ten, it's up to you. Think of it as an AP wire service for astronomy news.

Here is a list of our current contributing bloggers and links to their blogs. Check it out; this is a great collection of space and astronomy news.

• Astroblog- Ian Musgrave
• Astroengine- Ian O'Neill
• Astronomy Blog- Stuart
• Bad Astronomy- Phil Plait
• Cosmic Ray- Ray Villard
• Professor Astronomy- Kurtis Williams
• Simostronomy- Mike Simonsen
• Slacker Astronomy- Michael Koppelman, Doug Welch
• Space Center Blog- Dr. Rosa Williams
• Space Disco- Dave Mosher
• Star Stryder- Pamela L. Gay
• Starts With A Bang!- Ethan Siegel
• Systemic- Greg Laughlin
• The Spacewriter's Ramblings- Carolyn Collins Petersen
• Tom's Astronomy Blog- Tom
• Twisted Physics- Jennifer Ouellette
• Visual Astronomy- Sean Welton
• Whats Up?- Alan Dyer

Each month we select a number of articles from the best bloggers and place them on a private weblog. This blog is not visible to search engines or to the public, only to newsletter editors who have subscribed and to the authors of the content. If you'd like to subscribe, simply email me at mikesimonsen at aavso dot org. I'll send you an invitation to log in by email.

In order to use this material, editors are required to give full credit to the author, publish the blog name and url associated with the article in their newsletter, and leave a comment on the writers bureau blog for each piece you download, stating where and when it will be
used.

This way the authors get proper credit for their work and publicity for their blog. When you leave a comment stating the usage of the material they get a running tally of the number of copies of their content for their purposes; such as obtaining grants to do outreach and explaining to their bosses why they spend so much time producing excellent science articles for free!

What you get is informative, scientifically accurate, professionally written content gleaned from the top writers on the web all in one place each month for you to use in your newsletter!

Since this is an AAVSO initiative, the articles we select are positive, informative pieces mainly focusing on variable stars, novae, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei, transiting exoplanets, black holes, stellar evolution, CCD and visual observing techniques, photometry, all sky surveys, as well as book, software and equipment reviews.

We have about 50 editors subscribing to the bureau serving around 8,000 readers from the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia. If your astronomy club or society could benefit from this service, contact me or have your newsletter editor email me anytime.