Sometimes the holidays come early! We are super pleased to announce that XE.com will be sponsoring our YouTube channel for 2014! You can read all about this in our press release:

XE.com helps CosmoQuest fill educational funding gaps left by federal cuts

The CosmoQuest virtual research facility received an early New Year’s gift this year: XE.com, makers of the world’s favorite foreign exchange app and website, has sponsored the 2014 production of their online astronomy and science education videos. These videos provide public access to astronomy seminars, discussions, conferences, and even virtual star parties. This vast array of programming is collected together through the 365 Days of Astronomy Project.

For one more year,  our video master, Richard Drumm, gets to keep keeping up the AstrosphereVids YouTube channel where we archive all our Hangouts, tutorials, and random acts of (videotaped) science, all in the name of providing you 365 Days of Astronomy.

We can’t tell you how stupidly happy this makes us.

For those of you who don’t know about XE.com, they are a currency website formed during the first wave of dot coms, and they have continued to thrive as an independent company since 1995. They are a data junkies information source for currency information, and they facilitate currency exchange through XE Trade. In addition to their website, they have a mobile currency app (how I keep track of pennies, pounds, and rupiah).  It is really good to say we are sponsored by a company who has an app I like and use. As a company born out of technology, they understand that science and tech are deeply important and they want to help spread science globally. Steven Dengler, their CEO, says in the press release:

Sponsoring CosmoQuest and its 365 Days of Astronomy programming is XE’s way of investing in creating a more scientifically literate future. Science education is the cornerstone of our modern society, and we are proud to help CosmoQuest ignite the spark of scientific interest and learning around the world.

I’m hoping that we can make XE.com continually proud of what we are able to create over the coming months and hopefully years. This is a firm that figured out how to survive through two different dot com busts. That kind of resiliency is something I hope is contagious. We hope to still be standing on the other side of today’s science funding difficulties, and XE.com‘s support is the first step in helping us build a more scientifically literate tomorrow.

Now…. go watch some videos over on youtube. (No – not the cat videos, the astronomy videos). And remember – If your screen is big enough, you can watch videos and do science on CosmoQuest all at the same time. (And if you just want to watch the videos, that’s ok, the science will still be here when you’re done.)

Thank you XE.com!