Now that 100 Hours of Astronomy has come and gone, I want to share some of the highlights with you. Despite some initial problems, 80 Telescopes Around the World (the 24-hour research observatory webcast, on Apr 3) was a huge success. According to Ustream, who webcasted the event, there were over 120,000 viewers and 180,000 hits during the 24 hours! Telescopes were visited in every continent of the world (except Africa), both on the ground and in space. The picture below is from Calgary's Rothney Observatory, with Phil Langill presenting—congratulations to Rothney for being the only observatory on Canadian soil! If you missed the live webcast, you can see archived videos for each observatory here.
The 24-hour Global Star Party on Apr 4 was also a real blast. There were 2329 events registered on the 100 Hours site, and perhaps up to a million people who looked through a telescope that day!
 There were 54 Canadian events registered, but I know there were a lot more than that! Over the coming weeks, I will feature Canadian events in this blog—so send in your reports and pictures to SkyNews! In Kingston, we got weathered out on the 4th, but it was clear on the 5th (Sun Day), and the picture to the left is from our solar observing that day—we had about 60 people come by and look at the Sun. Several groups around the world also webcasted and/or recorded their starparty events. I checked out webcasts from Holland, Syria, Florida, and Greece. You can see some of the 100 Hours videos on the 100 Hours YouTube site.
There are no Canadian videos there yet—if you have any, let me know!
Image of M83, courtesy of Steve Cullen, LightBuckets Observatory.
Image of M13 courtesy of Gianluca Masi, Bellatrix Observatory.
Image of Saturn, courtesy of Gianluca Masi, Bellatrix Observatory.
I also want to mention 100 Hours of Remote Astronomy, where nine remote telescope facilities generously gave free time during 100 Hours. Over 500 people registered, and there were tens of thousands of visitors. The feedback from this was overwhelmingly positive, and hopefully similar events will happen in the future. MyTelescope.com, courtesy of Glynn Burke, was the Canadian facility taking part in 100HRA. As you can see below, some gorgeous images were obtained! The image of the globular cluster M13 is one of the finest I have ever seen.
Let me end today by reminding you to send in your IYA reports and activities.You can see them here. And I would love to hear from you! Send me an email and let me know what you think of the blog and the SkyNews IYA pages and what IYA activities you’ve been doing (and I promise to highlight you in my blog).
Finally, we have just set up a SkyNews message board/forum. This is the place for you to talk about pretty much anything related to astronomy: IYA, observing, equipment, photography, and more.
In my next blog, I’ll tell you about the great things happening in Nova Scotia.
Till next time,
Terry
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Friday, April 10, 2009