Excitement is building for next year's official designation of 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy, brought to you by the United Nations.
[You may remember the United Nations from such years as 2003: Year of Freshwater; 2005: Year of Physics; and, apparently, 2008: Year of the Potato.]
IYA was designated by the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first astronomical observation through a telescope.
Official opening ceremonies will be in Paris on January 15 and 16, and the U.S. will launch it's participation in the event during the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting in Long Beach, California.
IYA folks at AGU presented a couple fun projects related to the festivities, including mass distribution of $10 telescopes and nationwide pushes for dark skies, i.e., reduced light pollution, which would help stargazers as well as sea turtles.
From a NatGeo perspective, one of the more intriguing events is the Astronomy and World Heritage thematic initiative, which aims "to establish a link between science and culture on the basis of research aimed at acknowledging the cultural and scientific values of properties connected with astronomy."
Portion of a zodiac on the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt
—Photo by Victoria Jaggard
