Global Astronomy Month 2020

GLOBAL ASTRONOMY MONTH – ZERO SHADOW DAY REPORT

City: Chennai

Date: 24/04/2020

Global Astronomy Month (GAM), organized in April every year by Astronomers Without Borders, is the world's largest global celebration of astronomy. For this year, SPACE has suggested several GAM events for conduction by SPACE associated schools.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Total number of participants 600.
• Science behind the Zero Shadow Day is discussed in online ZSD video.
• This program motivated the participants to make use of this international opportunity provided by SPACE for observing the celestial event Zero Shadow Day.
• Participants were trained well and the concepts were made clear for performing the observation from their home.
• Participants observed this event personally in their residence and shared their experience with us.

DESCRIPTION:

Earth Spins on its own axis inclined at 23.5 ° to the plane of revolution and it takes 365.25 days to complete one revolution around the sun. Apparently we can see Sun moves between two extreme positions in the sky. We set two latitudes in these extremes as Tropic of Cancer 23.5° N for Northern Hemisphere and Tropic of Capricorn 23.5° S. Due to Earth’s inclination and its motion around the Sun seasons occur.

The lack of shadow is beautiful too. It happens twice a year, for places between +23.5 N and 23.5 S degrees latitude. The Sun is almost never exactly overhead at noon, but usually transits a bit lower in altitude, a bit to the north or a bit to the south. We know that the northern most and southern most points are the two solstices, and the crossing of the Sun across the equator are the two equinoxes.

PHOTOGRAPHS:

Students Captured Photographs

Dissappearing of shadows captured by participants on ZSD

                                                              Participants real time observation of ZSD

 CONCLUSION:

                       The participants understood the concept of Zero Shadow Day – ZSD, its occurrences in the year and explored with different objects they have and clicked photographs.