Note: please see the main Hangoutathon page and the second blog post for current information!

It’s been more than two years since the sequestration and the following loss of a NASA education and public outreach grant has hit the citizen science project CosmoQuest, but with the help of donations it has been able to survive and even expand and improve. While there have been two relatively successful fundraisers in 2013 and 2014 dubbed Hangoutathons after the Google Hangouts platform, the donations only go so far before they run out. There may be a new NASA grant on the horizon for CosmoQuest later this year, but until then the project still needs support and that’s why a third 36-hour Hangoutathon is going to happen at the end of April in less than two weeks.

So what happens on a Hangoutathon exactly? For that you can go to the index pages of the 2013 and 2014 Hangoutathons to find out – the full recordings of both events are on Youtube and while it’s really a bit too much to watch everything in one go, this is a treasure trove of science, astronomy and fun of all kinds. A full schedule of the 2015 Hangoutathon will probably be available soon and this year it’s going to be even more exciting because amongst a lot of other things CosmoQuest is partnering up with Astronomers without Borders and the Global Star Parties of the Global Astronomy Month!

For now, here are a couple of links:

• Pamela Gay’s April 2013 post about the funding situation at CosmoQuest

• Last year’s blog post from me about CosmoQuest’s Moon- Planet- and Asteroid-Mappers

• The Journey to CosmoQuest – my 2013 article on how I found CosmoQuest and more

• Follow CosmoQuest on Google+, Twitter and Facebook!

• The WSH Crew Community on Google+, supporting the CosmoQuest and Universe Today Hangouts

There will be at least a second post, if not some others about the Hangoutathon and CosmoQuest before the end of next week, so stay tuned!