Beeing an AWB affiliate representing the Linzer Astronomical Society - LAG / AUSTRIA I took part in the
"Big Dipper &
Southern Cross" ONLINE-event
a cooperation between I took some screenshots and drafted afterwards the following small review, about the event. This page is part of a mainly German written site.
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PART ONE - THE NORTH - 08.01.2010 Gianluca Masi from Virtual Telescope started this event on the northern hemisphere on Friday 08 01 2010. Unfortunately bad weather conditions made live observing impossible. But nevertheless Gianluca presented an impressive 2 1/2 - hour session. He presented northern objects made by the main telescope (C14) of bellatrixobservatory (see following picture).
At the beginning some technical problems occured .......the server crashed ... and backupsystems had to start ......
..... and 10 minutes later Gianluca was online and he startet his big "Bad Weather-Northernsky-Show"
And as we all know him, it was a pleasure to listen to his entertaining words and to look at his great pictures :-)
And we all again had big fun chatting around the world and enjoing our big community of astronomers, amateurastronomers, astronomic publicoutreach workers........ sharing our sky, sharing our interest for astronomy, sharing our enthusiasm...... ....... LOOKING UP TO OUR ONE SKY
Following are some pictures showing the northern sky during this event
During our chat we talked about some coffee, maybe this was an reaction following Gianluca's example to drink something - someone assumed this was his promotion-activity of this evening for Virtual_telescopes sponsors ;-) - but I think talking so much makes simple thirsty
Coffee-talk:
11:13 thilina_atn: Julio, did you bring coffee for us?
Onother beside-topic for astronomers is always weather:
Great finish, bye to All, good night, good morning, depending where you are, see
you on sunday on the southern hemisphere at GRAS - Thank you, Gianluca for
this impressive show ! PART TWO - THE SOUTH - 10.01.2010
Terry Bridges did the second part of this great event and presented the southern hemisphere. This was a very special setting. While Terry was sitting in Canada at his computer, he controlled a telescope + CCD-camera in Australia (GRAS/Moorok) and he took live images in the southern skies, sent them to Gianluca Masi in Italy who published them at virtualtelescope page. This all was attended by a worldwide chat. Befor I linked myself to this session I took a look to Australias weatherconditions. Because I had already a trial-account at GRAS I logged in and took a look at the allskypicture and weatherinformations.
WHAT A PLEASURE ! - CLEAR SKIES !!!
Terry controled remote from Canada the telescope and the camera in Australia .....
.... and Gianluca did the image processing in Italy. It was a great teamwork !
To get a little bit of the feeling, the atmosphere of this global event I will cite some statements during this event made only by one participant.
azhy: Iraq is here !!
During the whole technical complex session there was only for some minutes a
little "black out"
...... and after some minutes the most people have been back
All following pictures were done by GRAS-Telescope No. G06
"Big Dipper to Southern Cross" - ONLINE EVENT was again a piece of online- history, concerning the feeling of togetherness around the globe of professional astronomers and amateurastronomers as well. Again the slogan "ONE PEOPLE, ONE SKY" became true. We all could feel - at first hand - the connecting impact of astronomy. MANY THANKS TO GIANLUCA ! MANY THANKS TO TERRY BRIDGES ! MANY THANKS TO ARNIE ROSNER ! (GRAS)
MANY THANKS TO MIKE SIMMONS !
During this second part of BDSC, Mike Simmons, president and founder of AWB, was able presenting this event at the official Closing Ceremony of IYA 2009 in Padua/Italy. His short presentation was a great success! For example the vice-president of the IAU, George Miley, was surprised to realize that this event was beeing watched by visitors from 84 countries beeing in contact and doing simultaneously a worldwide chat. Just before, Miley had exhorted to use the Internet as an important tool in the publication and promotion of astronomy - and he is right, and we already do !!!
Following are the old links to the first historic Remote-Observing-Meeting of AWB and Virtual Telescope.
KLICK
HERE
KLICK HERE
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