AWB-Car meets ASTER (Erciyes University Astronomy Club)

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Jun 01

2010

by Johannes Stübler

On 24.5.2010 we arrived at Kayseri and visited the Erciyes University. Dr. Ferhart Fikri Özeren welcomed us very warming and open-hearted. After a first visit of the institute and the radiotelescope (12m-dish) we made a round trip to the oldest place of Anatolia the ancient city called Kârum Kaneš (Assyrian tradecenter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCltepe about 2000BC)

On the next day we met students and members of ASTER(Erciyes University Astronomy Club) and I gave a little lecture to them similary to that I did in Syria. - As a sideline:Unfortunately I got no contact in Jordan - JAS(Jordan Astronomy Society) and other people in this region did never respond to my e-mails:-(  but I did some astronomy on the fly with interested Jordan people too :-)

But here in Turkey the response to my activity and the interest in the activities of AWB has been enormous. It was really a pleasure! But as everywhere the time flied and it was again too soon to say goodbye to the nice people of ASTER. Additionally I planned to visit Arif Solmaz, the NC of Turkey, but my scheduling was too short rated, I underestimated the big distances of this big country, too much beautiful places we had to visit and we had to hurry to catch our car-train back to Austria, where we arrived today.

Concluding I can say that the idea, to combine travelling with astronomy and especially with the ideas of AWB, has matched perfectly. It was great to do astronomy on the fly and it was a pleasure to meet people everywhere interested in the stars, interested in the goals of AWB. "ONE PEOPLE, ONE SKY" became really true to me and I am sure that this trip was not my only trip like this :-)

Johannes