IYA2009 news from Uruguay
18 December 2009
News has reached the IYA2009 Secretariat of several highly successful astronomy popularisation initiatives from Uruguay.
A mobile digital planetarium with a dome of 8 metre diameter travelled around the whole country throughout the year, providing sessions to 50,000 people, mainly children from local schools that never before had seen a planetarium session (http://www.kappacrucis.com.uy/).
Uruguay has been developing astronomy at high school since 1889 and recently with strong emphasis in observatories (http://astronomia2009.org.uy/aia/observatorios/observatorios-en-uruguay/). After several years of preparation, in 2009 astronomy was introduced in primary school also, from ages 4 to 11 years.
Uruguay held the Second Iberoamerican School of Astrobiology with lectures given by 20 prominent researchers in this field (http://www.astronomia.edu.uy/astrobiologia2009/).
In 2008 the Latinamerican Olympiads of Astronomy and Astronautics was founded, and the first implementation was in Brazil during IYA2009.
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