Germany's Astronomietag coincides with the Global Star Party

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Apr 08

2011

by GAMBlog

By sheer coincidence the Global Star Party will be pretty big in Germany this year which is also looking forward to generally clear skies that evening: the same April 9 had been selected - some time ago - as the date for our Astronomietag (Astronomy Day), held here annually since 2003. The first one was linked to the brilliant opposition of Mars that year and thus held in September, as were the next few Astronomietage - but there was a problem: Here at 50° North the evening ecliptic lies very flat in the fall, and thus the view of planets and even the Moon was always rather poor to non-existent.

Eventually the Astronomietag was moved to the spring with its steep evening ecliptic, when even a young lunar crescent can be seen for hours, as goes for planets in evening apparition. The choice of April 9 was kind of natural this year, given the general timeframe and the lunar phase (you can show a great terminator, and yet the skies may permit some decent deep sky viewing as well). As of today, over 150 star parties and other events have been registered on the Astronomietag website, and a dedicated Twitter feed has also been launched for the first time.

In the future the German Vereinigung der Sternfreunde - which organizes the Astronomietag - and AWB will try coordinate the dates beforehand, in the hope that Astronomy Days in other countries join in. Perhaps a World Astronomy Day could even get endorsement by the U.N. eventually? Coordinating such events worldwide should give them more clout, with greater impact in the new as well as traditional media. The idea must be to raise awareness in the general public that such things exist at all - and to lead them to the respective websites where they can track down star parties in their neighborhood.

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Blogger: Daniel Fischer