Sugar Daddies

By Slacker on December 11, 2005 at 7:00 pm | In Blog Posts |

You may have noticed that Slacker Astronomy has a new sponsor: Oceanside Photo and Telescope. Allow us to explain…

Slacker Astronomy costs about $130/month in bandwidth and server charges. Thus far your gracious donations have been able to cover those charges. Which means that Aaron’s wife, Pamela’s dogs and Travis’ gambling debts don’t have to suffer.

However, we would like to take SA to new audiences. Also, our bandwidth requirements are growing rapidly (thanks to your word of mouth) so we need to start socking away for when your donations can’t cover our bills. So we sold our soul to the devil, but in this case a benevolent devil. (I guess that means it isn’t a devil after all, but since when has Slacker Astronomy been good at vocbulary, vocobculayr, vocablary, vocabulary?)

Our agreement with Oceanside was easy. Pamela and Aaron both have prior experience as customers of theirs and we both can honestly say that their service is top notch. Aaron in particular, had some serious trouble with a GOTO mount about 3 years ago and remembers how incredibly helpful the OPT staff was. They went well beyond the call of duty to help him troubleshoot it, when the problem was not theirs but the manufacturer’s. Because of service like this that, it is our pleasure to welcome them as a sponsor.

We can honestly say that you’ll get good service from them when you need to purchase some equipment and gear. We know from first-hand experience.

In return for their sponsorship, OPT is covering the bill for Pamela to travel to the annual meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in January. She has been invited to give a talk to them about podcasting. Kudos to OPT and to Pamela!

Rest assured, this is not our only attempt to keep the lights on. We also recently submitted a 36-page grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to fund SA for 3 years (and fund many improvements such as more frequent shows, a better web site, more recording equipment, etc.). If any of you have contacts at NSF, give them a shout on our behalf!

Also, if you know of anyone else interested in sponsoring us, or other grant programs we can apply to, please don’t be a stranger. We accept tips to info@slackerastronomy.org.

Thanks!