The International Year of Astronomy (IYA) 2009 is the biggest public science outreach event ever, with more than 815 million people in 148 countries taking part, says its concluding report released yesterday at the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting in Lisbon. Organizers say its decision to focus IYA2009’s €18 million budget on communicating astronomy to the public, rather than splitting funding between outreach and research, and appointing a global coordinator to oversee the project, is a successful model that should be adopted by future public science outreach events.

Read more: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/09/international-year-of-astronomy.html