It has been a great 100 Hours of Astronomy and as things slowly wind down from the fevered pitch they had reached, I have been given another opportunity to wrap up the various events that were held across the country as part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy. As I had suggested in my previous post, the number of events registered from India, did shoot up and reached up to 89. It's great to see all those events on the map out there.

The most interesting and unique programme was done by the Manthan Educational Society, Ahmedabad, India between 2nd and 5th April, 2009. They arranged for a mobile camel cart exhibition, which I believe has got a few views on the 100HA gallery too. The exhibition has travelled through various parts of Ahmedabad and will eventually carry on to all parts of the state of Gujarat through urban and rural centers. It was also selected as Event of the Day on the 100 Hours of Astronomy site.

From the state of Gujarat, with the Kutch Amateur Astronomers Club of Bhuj, more than 150 people turned up for the programme, where among other things they got views of the Moon and Saturn and had several first time visitors to whom they showed the wonders of the sky. They also have a dedicated blog with content and more images of their programme for the whole of this year.

SPACE also conducted various activities in Delhi throughout its 3 day period beginning with astronomical and historical heritage of their venue, the Jantar Mantar. A group of nearly 300 people were shown the Sun, Moon and Saturn through telescopes over the three day period. They also screened the live webcast of "Around the World in 80 telescopes". Several practical measurements were also made on age old instruments found there with reasonably good accuracy. The Bangalore Astronomical Society organised the event one day in advance. The Society is enthusiastic and active in the South of the country.

Although this is not a complete coverage of the 100 Hours events, I hope this presents a representative example of various activities organised by amateur astronomy clubs and other organisations from across the country. This post has been made possible with the help of a cross section of reports appearing on the Yahoo! Group dedicated to Indian celebrations of International Year of Astronomy 2009. Here too, I have linked to the appropriate pages to let them do the talking.