You may or may not know this: 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.
What, you may wonder, does that mean?
Well, in 1609, two major events in the history of astronomy occurred: Galileo Galilei first pointed his telescope at the night sky, and Johannes Kepler published his laws of planetary motions. If you do the math, 1609 was precisely 400 years ago this year. So to celebrate these huge moments in science, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and UNESCO have organized a global celebration in their honor. Now, I am aware that the IAU is the organization responsible for the demotion of Pluto, but I have decided to forgive them for that.
There are all sorts of interesting projects being done in this International Year of Astronomy. And why not?! Galileo is the person credited with realizing there are craters on the Moon, moons around Jupiter (ever wonder why Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io are called Galilean moons?), rings around Saturn – although he didn’t know they were rings – and phases of the planet Venus. You could say Galileo is kind of a big deal. Which makes it appropriate that one of the projects I’ve read about is a local school making a model of the solar system to scale, that stretches across their entire town. It shows just how big the solar system is… which ought to give people a feel for how incomprehensibly huge the universe is.
Another part of the International Year of Astronomy is Space Day. I believe Space Day is celebrated every year, it’s just that this year it is bigger because of IYA. May 1, 2009 is Space Day.
For my part, I have been trying to honor the International Year of Astronomy in a few ways. I have made it a point to attend as many public observatory events as possible. That’s something I would do anyway, but it feels more important this year. I have also made a more concerted effort to track my own observations when I use my telescope. I have a special, designated Moleskine notebook for this very purpose. I also take pictures through my telescope as often as the weather allows. I intend to spend Space Day watching the sunset with my fabulous boyfriend, then heading to WestConn’s observatory for their public night, then hopefully using my own binoculars to check out the things I don’t get to see there. Finally, I happen to be traveling to Florence, Italy this year. Florence is where Galileo did most of his work! It is a happy coincidence, the trip was not planned to include Florence for this reason, but it’s kind of cool anyway!
Hopefully now that I have made everyone aware of this year’s astronomical significance, more people will try to “look up” from time to time!
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