By Christie McMonigal Over the past few years we have been increasing our presence on social media, and this GAM we have made some really big steps in this direction, along with decreasing the focus on the website. This year we have set up an instagram account, started utilising the Facebook Live video function, and brought on board a social media manager to help guide our activity. The reason we have turned out focus to social media is because that is where our community is. Across the globe, mobile phone usage is increasing, more than 50% of the time we...

By Victoriano Canales Cerdá Observation of the Moon Spain is dressed as a gala at this year's Global Astronomy Month (GAM). Not many activities have been done, but they have been overwhelming. Ciudad Real, Alicante, Huesca, Malaga, Seville and Palencia were the provinces that presented the most activities. The inaugural Star Party was used to make the Marathon Messier between partners and a special activity for the general public. Different lectures and workshops on astronomy were held during the week. In the second weekend, the Moon was the protagonist in various associations, performing activities for their observation and photography. During...

By Rosa Doran Often, when you tell someone that you are an astronomer you immediately receive a smile spiced with surprise. The feeling is mixed; and you wonder what does that smile mean ? The person looking at you: Option 1 → really loves astronomy and is happy with the prospect of some nice exchange of information; Option 2 → knows nothing about the topic but would really like to learn more; Option 3 → thinks you maybe can make their horoscope. In any case the feeling is good. Either you have the opportunity to discuss some nice news related...

By Dr Caitlin Fisher The humble fruit fly (source: NASA - https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/AFEx ) When I was a child, I loved astronomy. I knew my planets (poor, poor Pluto), had glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the bedroom ceiling and pretended I could see the Milky Way from our backyard. However I was shocked when I learned how fit an astronaut's body had to be to withstand the high g-forces as the rocket ship took off into space as well as the harsh conditions on the spacecraft. I reluctantly rethought my career plans as an astronaut. Luckily, I had a back-up plan -...

By Borahan Aydoğmuş “There's a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” - Isaac Asimov As humans since our existence we gazed upon the stars. We referred the celestials as gods once. We gave them different characters and different names and always thought how far they are. Now we realize that they are like Earth, objects in space. They are not more special then us nor we are more special then them. But we forget that even though we all share a pale blue dot, we are not as close to each other...