The Cosmic Diary is a  legacy of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, one of Cornerstone project which aimed to put a human face on astronomy. More than 25 astronomers from ESA, ESO, JAXA, NASA and other institutions, located all around the world, blogged in their native languages, mostly in English, French & Spanish. I am lucky to have been part of this project since the first day in January 2009.

In January 2011, the IYA executive committee transfered  the web site responsibilities to the SETI Institute which provided access to their server. As a Principal Investigator at the SETI Institute, I took over the management of the site.

In April 2012, the New Cosmic Diary morphed into a fully hosted web site of the SETI Institute. We redesigned it using a multi-sites & multi-users WordPress server. An archive of the previous web site can be found on http://archive.cosmicdiary.org/. The new web site has been modernized and we will continue to improve it in the future.

The Carl Sagan Center research center, part of the SETI Institute, aims to understand the origins of life or the extent to which life may be present beyond Earth. Astrobiology is a way to understand the various factors in the Drake equation, and thus to help guide the search for extraterrestrial life. We therefore decided to expand the Cosmic Diary to all disciplines part of astrobiology.

Today the bloggers of Cosmic Diary Network are:

• David Barrado Navascués, Director of the German-Spanish Astronomical Center and Researcher at the Center of Astrobiology in Spain.
• Nelly Ben Hayoun, Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute
• Lori Fenton, Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Rob French, Research Assistant at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Julien Girard, Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory
• Noah Hammond, Research Assistant at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Gerry Harp, Senior Astrophysicist at the SETI Institute
• Darlene Lim, Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Franck Marchis, Planetary Astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and Associate Astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris.
• Emanuel Mumpuni, Research Staff at National Institute of Aeronautics and Space, Indonesia
• Danny Olson, Research Assistant at the PDS Rings Node. He is working on a Voyager data project.
• Mark Showalter, Senior Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Fernando Patat, Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory
• Cynthia Phillips, Senior Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Margaret Race, Senior Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute
• Jon Richards, Senior software Engineer at the SETI Institute
• Gayandhi de Silva, Research Astronomer at the Australian Astronomical Observatory
• Amber Straughn, Research Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute
• Doug Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute
• Ned Wright, Professor at the Astronomy Department at UCLA

• Gemini Planet Imager, a project to image and characterize Jupiter-like exoplanets. GPI authors are
• Dan Fabrycky, today an Hubble Fellow at UCSC and soon an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Chicago
• Franck Marchis, Planetary Astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and Associate Astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris.

If you are interested in joining the Cosmic Diary Network, please contact me.

Clear Skies

Franck M. @AllPlanets