I've been on the hunt for new podcasts again, and I have to admit I recently came across a great one; it's run by a group from NASA (America's governmental space agency), featuring images from the group's Spitzer Space Telescope, which happens to be the largest infrared telescope mankind has ever put into space. Part of a much grander scheme going on right now known as the Great Observatories Program, the whole idea is to coordinate all the various "super-telescopes" that are currently in existence (including Spitzer, the Hubble visual-image space telescope, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory) to all point at the same things at the same times, so as to create a super-complex portrait of that particular place in space.

As mentioned, Spitzer specializes in taking infrared photos, which can many times produce just these stunning images, the ones NASA most uses to create retail posters and the like. And in their ongoing effort to let the public understand more about where their tax dollars are going, someone got the smart idea of putting basically a weekly slideshow together of what Spitzer shot that week, transitioning all Ken-Burns style and with cool electronica music in the back, and even with informative captions about what you're watching. It's this remarkable little five minutes of entertainment delivered to your home computer automatically each week via iTunes, whenever you sign up for the automated podcast feed that they provide; a great little "mini-channel" to add to my "mini-network" of independent podcasts, that all add up to about a half-hour a day of original content that I seem to watching these days through iTunes specifically*. And this of course gets into what I was talking about last week with the Writers Guild of America strike; that it seems I watch more and more peer-produced mini-content on a regular basis these days, to the point for example that I now watch nothing but podcasts in the half-hour between Simpsons episodes I watch here in Chicago each night, instead of the crappy rerun of That '70s Show that I used to watch. That may not seem like much at first, but when millions of people stop watching that crappy rerun between Simpsons in order to watch a half-hour of podcasts instead, that actually means a change of millions of dollars of revenue for that local station selling advertising during that rerun.

This is not the only podcast NASA sponsors, by the way; in fact, they very recently started up a brand-new re-design of their central website specifically to let everyone know about all the online things they now offer (which is a lot -- not only multiple blogs and podcasts, but also a kids' club, a YouTube-style interface for their growing collection of free online video, a chance to start an account if you want so as to keep track of your favorite media there, and a whole lot more). This is a great, great thing to see in my opinion -- a way to not only understand more about how your government works, but also for that agency to explain its activities in greater detail to the tax-paying public to begin with, not to mention inspiring an entirely new generation of space-obsessed nerds and the tax-paying amateur buffs who will support NASA down the line. It's one of those things I used to dream could've existed when I was a kid and a nerdy amateur astronomer myself, something I encourage all of you to take advantage of.

*Dude, and I forgot, they even publish a high-definition version and everything! This is something else I've been thinking a lot about recently, ever since finding out that I will be receiving my first-ever HD television this Christmas as a present (yeah, amazing, I know); that as the collapse of the traditional Hollywood industry proceeds, something I've been talking about at CCLaP a lot recently, part of it is being fueled by so much high-end equipment being suddenly available at relatively low costs, and with a way to easily and instantly distribute that high-end content online with just a click of a button on both ends. Essentially it allows NASA to be its own miniature cable network; not one that needs to enter into a costly and messy partnership with a larger network like the Discovery Channel (for example) to get stuff on the air, but one that can literally just release a couple of hours of original content per week directly at their website/feed/iTunes channel, made with the same exact equipment the Discovery Channel uses, and looking just as good on the end-user's side when eventually watching on an HD television, as I'll soon be able to do myself with the podcasts I download. I'm all for this, and am amazed at how quickly such a world is coming about.