For the past couple of years, we have been excited about the success of ISAN and enthused that we have gotten thousands of people around the world looking through a telescope on the same night. But when you think of the thousands and maybe millions of people who own telescopes, we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do.

The problem really isn’t convincing these telescope owners to get their scopes out, its reaching them and informing them of the project. For ISAN we had modest goals because of the limited resources for contacting all of these stargazers. For 100HA we’ve set much higher goals, and the efforts to get every possible telescope out to the public have been exhausting and much of this work has been done by a group of Sidewalk Astronomer Regional and National Organizers.

Many national nodes have appointed 100HA coordinators, but many haven’t. To make sure that we reach as many people as possible, Sidewalk Astronomers Regional and National Organizers have taken on the task of trying to contact every amateur astronomy organization in their area and encouraging them not only to take part in this event, but to turn them into organizers reaching outside of their club to other clubs and individuals in their neighborhoods.

Sure, everyone knows this is happening, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank these individuals for all the work they are doing. Until you’ve jumped into a project at this level, you have no idea of the amount of time and energy it takes. First you have to find these clubs, get to the right person (and in some cases they aren’t used to doing public events and there are many questions and concerns to address), and then keep up on who is doing what and where they plan on doing it.

Manoj Pai from India, Marcelo Souza from Brazil, Paul Moss from New Zealand and Azhy Hazan from Iraq have been tireless in their quest to get their regions involved in the 100HA and they in turn have brought in some quite amazing National Organizers like Armando Lee from the Philippines and Thilina Heenatigala from Sri Lanka. They are representative of the organizers working on this project and their energy and passion for astronomy is practically indescribable.

As if 100HA wasn’t enough work, during one conference call, they came up with the idea of Beauty Without Borders and within a mere two weeks we had over 16 countries stepping out to view the beauty of Venus and the Moon. This ability to contact and mobilize people so quickly was as amazing to me as was their willingness to take on even more at such a busy time.

With people like this committed to this project, 100HA will be an astronomical celebration like none before and hopefully the beginning of many new friendships and nights of international observing.