Well what can I say. CosmoQuest had its very first Dragon*Con, though all of us working there are pretty much Con veterans by now. If you’ve never been to a Dragon*Con, it is a singular experience that is hard to describe. You walk down the hall past Storm Troopers, anime characters, and wizards, stopping to chat with a Captain Kirk or a woodland fairy, squeeing over a sighting of your favorite sci-fi, fantasy, and geeky celebs. In case the world of the fantastic isn’t enough for you, there is a group of “reality-based” fan-tracks that live in a corner of the Hilton, the Science, Space, Podcasting, and Skeptical Tracks. Across the hall are tables promoting reason and science, and one of them this year was the combined CosmoQuest and Astrosphere tables.

Dawn talks about citizen science to an attendee.

We had demo versions of MoonMappers up for people to try and handed out literature about citizen science and our projects in particular. We even wandered around the hall with an iPad version of crater identification and CosmoQuest stickers to hand out. With so many people waiting in line for celeb autographs, many were happy to do some science in the meantime. I even got up the gall to give out CosmoQuest stickers to the crew of the fantastic webseries The Guild, and received a lovely Save the Supers poster from Sandeep for it!

*BLUSH* and SQUEE!

Of course, we got to hang out with some of our favorite people: astronomers, musicians, artists, and writers alike. Our musical friends Marian Call and George Hrab performed at the Atlanta Skeptics Star Party, and Phil Plait and I provided the astronomical entertainment before a virtual star party was set up to accommodate the clouded out Atlanta patrons. During the Con, the CosmoQuest team continued to provide, dare I say, stellar content for the various tracks, such as a presentation on CosmoQuest, readings of astronomical short stories from Free Wifi on Mars, and discussions about evolution, creationism, and skepticism. Oh, and of course, I made comets for a group of kids in a panel with the amazing Laura Burns!

You want to check this out. Coming May 2013!

I’d say it was a successful “guerrilla science” excursion for the CosmoQuest team. If you want us to come to YOUR Con, you can always contact us at info [at] cosmoquest [dot] org.  As fans of science and science fiction, we love to merge the real and fantastical. It turns out, sci-fi and fantasy fans make great citizen scientists as well! So if you met one of us there and have joined the site since then, THANK YOU! And welcome to CosmoQuest.

More of my Dragon*Con photos can be found here. But you should REALLY check out Bruce Press’s professional photographs to get a feel for the incredible times we had.