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2006, January 8 - 16:47 — admin

Orrery.us is a website where we wish to create a place for bringing the planetary sciences community together and allowing them to collaborate and share information.

One of our primary motivators for this site is to share how-to's and cookbooks for doing various computational tasks. There are lots of people out there that are having to re-invent the wheel over and over again that could benefit from reading someone's account of how they got something to work. The work that is published in peer-reviewed journals shares scientific results and the underlying physical laws and ideas that led to them. However, the detailed day-to-day computer drudgerey for getting there is often elided. We think that these details are just as important, but don't necessarily belong in scientific papers, hopefully this website will be a place where you can find such guides, and where you will submit your own write-ups and solutions.

We want this site to be usable, and we need your help to make it that way. If you have any feedback for us, please let us know by sending us an e-mail at www@orrery.us.

How will the site grow?

Hopefully with your help. We have laid out the basic functionality, and we hope that you will submit stories and news items. As this happens, the category tree will become more detailed. However, don't let the confines of what we are already providing constrain your imagination. We want this site to be useful to you, the planetary sciences community, and the only way that we can ensure that is to modify and alter the site by adding functionality as the community asks for it.

Who is it for?

We hope that individuals involved in all aspects of planetary sciences will read and contribute material.

Why the name Orrery?

An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system. They are used to demonstrate how planets and moons orbit and rotate. They are simplified demonstrations to help visualize and understand a physical process. In the same way, we hope that this website will be a place where researchers, technical staff, and students in the planetary sciences will share their tips and tricks for getting things done with planetary data in a clear way that will help others visualize and understand the methods for accomplishing different goals.

Why the ".us" top level domain?

Philosophical answer:
The ".us" TLD can be thought of as referring to all of "us" that advance our knowledge of the solar system and beyond. Our endeavors are inherently collaborative, and we can accomplish more by sharing our ideas and methods than we could by working alone.
Practical answer:
Other appropiate TLDs like ".net" and ".org" were already taken, and we really liked the name "Orrery", so we took the ".us" TLD.

Since this is a ".us" site is it meant only for citizens of the United States? No, not at all. It's just a convenient TLD for us to use, we invite and encourage participation from planetary scientists from around the world.

Who's paying for all of this?

There is currently no funding support for this project. At the moment, the proprietors are donating all of the resources, and spending their precious spare time on the project. Hopefully, once we demonstrate its usefulness, we'll be able to get some formal support, and expand functionality.

Proprietors