Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying the blogs as much as I am. There will be a new blog every couple of days, so you will get to hear a lot about what's happening with 100 Hours of Astronomy and IYA around the world over the next few weeks. Please feel free to leave a comment-- we'd love to hear your feedback (note that you have to be registered on the site before you can post a comment though).
Today I first want to tell you about a joint initiative between 100 Hours of Astronomy and Universe Awareness (UNAWE): 100HA Junior. UNAWE, like 100 Hours of Astronomy, is an IYA global cornerstone project, and is aimed at using astronomy to inspire young disadvantaged children around the world. 100HA Junior is designed to make 100 Hours of Astronomy available to the youngest children of the world. In order to do this, we propose to connect amateur and professional astronomers with children on a one-to-one basis. We're doing this through a Google Group which astronomers and parents/teachers can use to make contact with each other. Once contact is established, then a conversation between the astronomer and children can be arranged. These conversations do not have to be high-tech-- even an email exchange would be very rewarding for both parties. For more information, and to get involved, please see the 100HA Junior website.
Now I'd like to highlight some recent updates to the 100 Hours of Astronomy website:
- We have added an Educational Resources section, which contains websites and other resources that will be of interest to students, teachers, and informal educators. We welcome your suggestions for resources that we can add to this section-- please email Terry Bridges.
- We now offer translated versions on How to Register your 100 Hours of Astronomy Event. Languages done so far are Romanian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Spanish, Indonesian, French and Russian. More languages will be coming in the next few days. You can find these translations on our Register Events section.
- We have been finding that several of the 100 Hours of Astronomy registered events have an incorrect venue location. So that people will be able to properly find your event, we ask that you use the Google Map feature to correctly place your venue location when you are submitting a new venue: on the submit venue page, click on the red push pin and move the pin to the correct location while zooming in the map. Once the location is correct, click on Apply. If you have already registered your event and wish to change an incorrect location: login to the site, find your event on the Find Events page, and click on the edit pen/pad icon on the left of the screen next to the Venue menu. From here you can move the push pin to the correct location, as described above.
- I'd like to remind everyone that our Forums are open for discussions on various topics relating to 100 Hours of Astronomy, IYA, or astronomy in general. Each forum topic has an enthusiastic monitor who is happy to answer questions (and 100 Hours of Astronomy task group members also contribute).
- Finally, be sure to order your 100 Hours of Astronomy official merchandise from Cafe Press now!
That's it for now. I hope all of your 100 Hours of Astronomy events are coming along well. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions about any aspect of 100 Hours of Astronomy.
Terry Bridges (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
