100 Hours of Astronomy Update

20 March 2009

We only have 13 days to go before the start of the 100 Hour of Astronomy celebration. Everything is on and track and looking good for a successful global event. We have a number of new items to tell you about which we hope you will find of interest.

Please Note: To be eligible for awards, and certificates your 100 Hours of Astronomy event must be registered on our Global Map Registry.

Awards, Reports and Recognition
* We will announce the creation of awards and award categories for Registered 100HA public sidewalk astronomy events. Prizes for these awards have been kindly sponsored by Celestron. Look for more information in a future announcement on this mailing list.

* A final100HA event report form is being designed to fill in and post online once the celebration is over - this will allow the rest of the global network a chance to see how other events fared and will help to gather data for the 100HA award winners.

* Personalised 100HA certificates for registered group events will be available for download. These have been designed to recognise your participation in this unprecedented event - the first of its kind.

80 Telescopes Around the World

Our exciting live webcasts from major research observatories around the world now has a new name - '80 Telescopes Around the World.' Many long hours have gone into fine tuning this event.

Don't forget to watch "Around the World in 80 Telescopes", a major webcast during 100HA. This unique 24-hour live webcast will feature some of the most advanced astronomical observatories both on and off the planet, letting you see images of the cosmos, send in questions, and discover what astronomers are doing right now. To see a schedule, and a sneak preview video, visit
http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/program/75-live-24-hour-research-observatory-webcast
The webcast will be broadcast through Ustream, and will therefore also appear at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/100-hours-of-astronomy
We encourage you to spread the word, and embed the "100 Hours of Astronomy" Ustream video player on your own website.
HOT NEWS! We're excited to welcome some recent additions to our program: the newly launched planet-hunting Kepler Mission and, direct from the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the South Pole Telescope!

Don't forget to visit our Blog, Picture Gallery and Forum Pages
These are good places to share new ideas, upload pictures from your events, get advice and find answers to your questions about organizing or attending 100 Hours of Astronomy events.

New Sponsor, Sky & Telescope

100 Hours of Astronomy welcomes our newest sponsor, Sky & Telescope. http://www.skyandtelescope.com We thank S&T for the use of their Lets Go Stargazing Guide as a free downloadable resource for everyone to use. To get your copy visit our resources page http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/all-content#faqs_factsheets This document is 3.5MB but well worth the download. Sky and Telescope Subscription Offer
Please Support the IYA2009, 100 Hours of Astronomy project by subscribing to Sky and Telescope magazine through the link on our web site. A small portion of all new and renewed subscriptions goes to this project .

Spread the word - this offer is available to anyone visiting our web site.

Spread the Word
We know there are thousands of 100 Hours of Astronomy events worldwide that have not yet been registered on our web site. While registration is not mandatory only those events that are registered will be eligible for the programs listed above -- and much more to come. If you know of other events in your area that have not yet registered on the official 100 Hours of Astronomy IYA2009 Cornerstone Project web site please tell them not to miss out on the programs you're enjoying.

Follow us on Twitter!
You can now get Twitter updates from us at: http://twitter.com/100Hours for the whole 100HA event and http://twitter.com/telescopecast for the "Around the World in 80 Telescopes" live 24-hour webcast

New 100HA Website Server

Just recently the 100HA website was moved to a new server to cope with the huge amount of data being uploaded and downloaded from our website.

We have also had a number of issues with the Google Map Registry failing to cope with the hundreds of registered events. This problem is being diagnosed and we hope to have the 100HA global maps loading a little faster than they were. Please do be patient if you are finding the download times a problem.

We wish to thank our great webteam for organising the server change and for all the hard work they are doing to keep the site well maintained and looking good.

Fingers Crossed for Clear skies!

www.100hoursofastronomy.org

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