General Article

IYA2009 Galilean Nights awards

The IYA2009 Cornerstone project Galilean Nights ran during October 2009 and saw thousands of individuals and organisations host a wide range of events to popularise astronomy and highlight the importance of Galileo's legacy. Now that event reports have been collated the Galilean Nights awards can be announced. There are six categories, each with a winner and two highly commended entries.

Highest attendance at a single registered event

Winner: “Exposição de Telescópios” run by Clube de Astronomia de Brasília, Brazil. More than16 500 people observed Jupiter and its moons with their own eyes over the course of seven days. http://www.galileannights.org/events/reports/gn835.pdf

Highly commended: “Cosmic Landscape”, Brazil. This public exhibition was held at the biggest shopping mall in Maceió (Brazil), and was swamped with 15,000 attendees. http://www.galileannights.org/events/reports/gn665.pdf

with more than 80 photos taken, one of the frame captured the Leonid
meteor ! At last, one successful observation of Leonid meter recorded
from Bangalore.



Leonid Meteor Shower was expected to be good this year, due to
1. new moon period ( darker skies )
2. estimated 200-500 meteors / hr from NASA for Indian observers
3. peak time favoring Indian observers.

but the show was spoiled by the clouds all over Bangalore and South India.

I was trying to coordinate with various enthusiast in and out of Bangalore till 12:00 midnight 17 Nov 09. to find if we have any chances of clear skies. unfortunately none of the places were clear, Bangalore, kolar, Bangarpet, gauribidnur, Tumkur and many more places were reviewed for observations.Finally settled for Bangalore based observation and photography in spite of clouds.

and One successful observation and photograph of Leonid meter recorded
from Bangalore.

Bangalore Astronomical Society as part of International Year of Astronomy 2009, organize a series of sidewalk astronomy nights in various areas of Bangalore.

"30 Non-Stop Sidewalk Astronomy Nights" is a unique program organized to reach more people in Bangalore.
From 02.Oct.2009 to 31.Oct.2009

Check comments for daily reports and photos shared here : http://picasaweb.google.co.in/bangaloreastronomicalsociety/SidewalkAstro...

Day 1 : Report:
Bangalore Astronomical Society started its 30 non-stop sidewalk astronomy Marathon today at Forum mall in koramangala, Bangalore.

Insipte of bad clouds, volunteers of BAS were ready with the telescopes. from 7 pm till 9:30 pm there was hardly any window to see moon or Jupiter, though we managed to show about 50 people moon. Bad skies spoiled the show. Disappointingly we were thinking of packing the telescopes.

When we were about to pack the telescopes, we noticed that the clouds started moving fast and moon was visible. Jupiter was out of sight :(