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As the 100 Hours of Astronomy and ISAN draw near, I catch myself checking the website a least a couple of days to check on the number of events, organization, and countries that are registered, and to check and see if particular clubs that I know are participating have posted their events. This is an exciting time and the 100 Hours of Astronomy project is one that every amateur should be involved in. It truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity. A couple of years ago, before the first ISAN, I sent a few emails to contacts in other countries asking clubs to join us for a night of sidewalk astronomy. Two days later I received a call from a member of an astronomy club here in Los Angeles because he’d heard of the event from his friends in Nepal. I couldn’t believe that the message had gone around the world so quickly and thought it must have been a fluke, but that experience was repeated several times in the following weeks. To many people that experience might not have been so impressive, but to me it was fantastic. While I am continually amazed at the worldwide astronomy network and how closely connected many people are, we need more astronomers. We need these astronomers because they are the ones that can engage the public in their neighborhoods. They are the ones that tell the public people on the other side of the world are doing the exact same thing as they are and having the exact same reactions. When people look through a telescope and see another planet I’m sure many of them are thinking of the photos they’ve seen of Earth from space. Our world, for now, is mostly contained on this planet and looking out into the Universe is uniting and celebrates our humanity. At the risk of sounding like bad sci-fi dialog, we are all just Earthlings. When you’re doing a public event, you create a little pocket of good will at the eyepiece, almost all people become friendly and polite and caring. Doing these international public events connects those little pockets of good feelings. It is amazing to feel a part of something so inclusive when we spend most of our lives being exclusive. If every club that is participating in 100 Hours would recruit one more club it would be a great start. Reach out to other astronomy clubs that you know that aren’t involved yet, invite them to join us whether they are far away or in your own city. If you aren’t an astronomer and you don’t see an event in your area posted, contact a local astronomy club and ask them to get involved. John Dobson has said, “If we had a million or so astronomers out there willing to let a few thousand people look through their telescopes, we might be on the way to letting all the people on this planet see the Universe” and while I don’t think we’re going to get a million astronomers signed up for 100HA, you can bet I’ll be keeping count.
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