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

IYA2009 ONLINE-CLOSING-EVENT of Virtualtelescope.
(7. Jan. 2010 19:30 UT)

I took some screenshots and drafted afterwards the following small review, about the event.
This page is part of a mainly German written site.

It was a great pleasure to participate at Gianluca Masi's emotive finale for the IYA2009 in Italy. Due to bad weather conditions no live observing through the telscope of Bellatrix Observatory was able, but Gianluca told us interesting details concerning Galileis big historic dedections.

Following pictures tell more than 1000 words ;-) Here for example the detection of Jupiters satellites.
 

In addition to it he gave us a look to the very old and rare book you can see below and to some original sketches made by Galileo Galilei and he explained the great work of Galileo and his importance to the conception of the world.

Beside getting information there was alwayes the opportunity to chat to each participant of this remote session around the world and we could make remarks and questions. We had much fun doing this, and sometimes I wondered that Gianluca, who could read our remarks at once, could stay to be concentrated ;-)

The following screenshots show, that Gianluca had already fun in his job :-)

9:57 JVannini: Gianluca, our friends on AWB are trying to get into the video. I sent the UStream URL to the mail list.
9:57 JVannini: Thanks to Thilina for helpingwith that :)
..............
9:57 HonorarySpock: Gianluca its cloudy here in Southern England. Its frustrating
9:59 HonorarySpock: Gianluca can you post that into the chat so we can click on the link
.............
10:00 astrojoe: Typing, typing not clicking ;-)
10:00 JVannini: lol Joe

......... and so on ........

After some historic thoughts on "Nebulosa Orionis" M42 has been the closing picture of this session.

Undoubtful this closing event was, again a  piece of online- history, fostering the feeling of togetherness around the globe of professional astronomers and amateurastronomers as well. Again the AWB-slogan "ONE PEOPLE, ONE SKY" became true. We all could feel - at first hand - the connecting impact of astronomy.

MANY THANK'S TO GIANLUCA - the very dedicated follower of outreach astronomy-work. With his work and enthusiasm he is always connecting people around the globe.

Here you can play and download the concluding words (mp3-file) of Gianluca of  "IYA2009-online closing event", finally quoting the AWB-Slogan :-)

Hear Gianluca Masi

 !

Following are the old links to the first historic Remote-Observing-Meeting of AWB and Virtual Telescope.

KLICK HERE   for a latest example of 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