News round-up

15 May 2009

It's Friday which means it's news round-up time! What a week it's been for astronomy, in large part because of the latest ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and the the launch of ESA's missions Herschel and Planck. The Scotsman has some coverage, and handily mentions IYA2009, albeit as a footnote in the very final paragraph. For the latest news on the servicing mission, ESA/Hubble Outreach Coordinator Colleen "The Shark" Sharkey is keeping a liveblog which you are hereby ordered to read.

Let's go Beyond the Universe to an astrofest being organised by the Brigham Young University (U.S.) Hang on, didn't they do stuff last week? Obviously their news round-up mentions have spurred them on. The astrofest will be held in the Eyring Science Center and at the Wilkinson Student Center terrace. According to the article, it's to honour "the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first glance through the telescope". I'd argue that it was a bit more than a glance.

Where would we be without telescopes? Probably not enjoying The International Year of Astronomy 2009, that's for sure. So it's good that New Scientist has a flick-through feature about the most important telescopes in history. The last one is an owl, but I think that's actually an advert or something. In its favour, it is a very good owl.

To Ottowa now, where OttowaFocus.com is kindly informing us of a show and star party at the Cube Gallery. They're combining fine art, refreshments, music and telescopes into an event which includes paintings and sculptures. Alongside these will be lectures and star parties during the run of the show.

Staying in Canada, and Science North in partnership with Laurentian University and the Sudbury Astronomy Club, will be holding a series of free star parties and public presentations at Science North over the next 12 months. Northern Life has an article about this, and Science North's website is worth a look-see if you're planning a visit.

Keen amateur astronomers may have been following the GLOBE At Night project, which encourages members of the public to help combat light pollution by keeping track of how dark their local skies actually are. Sky and Telescope has an excellent feature on 2009's efforts. This year was the most successful ever, no doubt in part due to IYA2009's support by making Dark Skies Awareness one of the Cornerstone Projects. Not that we want to take all the credit, or anything.

That's it! If you've read this far, thanks.

Lee Pullen

IYA2009 Staff Writer

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