Beeing an AWB affiliate representing the Linzer Astronomical Society - LAG / AUSTRIA I took part in the

 "Big Dipper & Southern Cross" ONLINE-event
8 Jan. 2010 (20:00-22:00 UT) and 10 Jan. 2010 ( 12:30-14:30 UT)

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.

Above the official logo of the BDSC

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?
11:14 jvannini: lol
11:14 astrojoe: Strong coffee please
11:14 jvannini: Carmelita Coffee!
11:14 HonorarySpock: Coffe need to keep me awake
11:14 thilina_atn: yup... coffee would be great, cz it's 3.44am here...
11:14 astrojoe: You are on the wrong side of our globe ;-)
11:14 thilina_atn: lol..
11:15 totalcontrol: nah, you are on the wrong side of MY globe! LOL ;)
11:15 SMacB-1: Caffè corretto for me Ta!
.........................

Onother beside-topic for astronomers is always weather:

10:03 Alloway: it was reasonably clear here but lots of ice crystals in the air
10:03 starladyjoan: snowing here in Maine, USA
10:03 astrojoe: Snowing in Autria too :-)
10:03 sean_con: cloud over germany :(
10:04 ulfus: It's minus 10 C and clear in the south of Sweden, and it is nice to do computer astronomy
10:07 captjwj: To ulfus, here in Omaham, NE it is -19 deg C!
10:08 HonorarySpock: -20 C that is cold
10:08 sean_con: are we competing about temperature?
10:09 HonorarySpock: It is around -4C in South London
10:09 captjwj: The cold weather seems to be world wide!!
10:09 daddyfixit: I'm very happy its about 22 degrees in my living room watching this
10:09 sean_con: @daddy LOL
10:10 sean_con: bremen i about -3° c
..................
 

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 !!
azhy: it is very nice to meet you southern sky people!!
azhy: welcome world!!! south and north east and west !!!
Azhy: one people, one sky, one virtual telescope, one Terry! =)
azhy: wonderful image!!
azhy: yeahhhhh!:)
azhy: folks ...we are really lucky with a perefect weather!!!
azhy: Keep going with these wonderful show
azhy: Now....from M42 to LMC...ONE PEOPLE..ONE SKY
Thilina: Azhy, Julio, Joan, Joe, Jessi --- AWB people.. isn't this great!!!!!!!! :)
azhy: Gianluca, the AWB Superstar
azhy: We are (( Astronomers With Jokes )) too :)

During the whole technical complex session there was only for some minutes a little "black out"
Gianluca published in the meantime the following hint ......

...... 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   to look at the historic 1. Remote Observing Event - a international collaboration on sharing our OneSky.

KLICK HERE  for a  report written in German of international collaboration on sharing our OneSky.

text & pictures Johannes Stübler LAG/Austria