Starting tomorrow (Oct. 22) professional and amateur astronomers around the world will be out in force to encourage as many people as possible to look through a telescope. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 Cornerstone project, Galilean Nights, will be a global experience, with more than 1000 public observing events in over 70 countries. If you participated in 100 Hours of Astronomy that took place in April 2009, this event is similar, but this time astronomers will be focusing on the objects that Galileo observed, especially with the Moon and Jupiter well-positioned in the evening sky.
Check out if there is an event near you at the Galilean Nights website. You can relive the revolutionary telescopic discoveries made 400 years ago by Galileo. There’s also an astrophotography competition that’s going on right now. There are two categories, “Earth and Sky” and “Beyond Earth,” and the last day to enter is October 27th.
Additionally, observatories are making their facilities available for remote observing sessions. Anyone with access to the internet will be able to control telescopes around the world by taking part in these sessions will be able to take photographs of astronomical objects from their own personal computers.
Galilean Nights is a truly global event, with hundreds of thousands of people discovering our Universe from all sorts of locations and settings around the world. Get involved, and experience your own Galileo moment!
I’ll be out with my scope. I should be studying, but to hell with it.
I’m in the UK so will need an IR telescope to see through the clouds
My personal Galileo moment came about twenty years ago, when I had the opportunity to see and hold in my hands a document in scrawled Latin with a very clear signature…Galileo Galilei. I can read some Latin, but this was beyond my capability, so I inquired as to what it said. It was the announcement he sent around to his friends announcing the creation of the new science of mechanics, the beginning of modern physics. I almost dropped it. This man took a voyage almost as far as his namesake has today.