IAU Outreach Newsletter

July 2013

In this newsletter:

1. Twitter account of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach
2. IAU Office of Astronomy for Development Newsletter #2
3. UNAWE workshop: register before July 31st
4. ESA Summer of Code in Space 2013 (SOCIS 2013)
5. "A Touch of the Universe" for the visually impaired: request your kits!
6. Wave at Saturn: NASA picture release
7. Twelfth National Festival on Popular Astronomy, Algeria
8. Guide to Resources for Teaching about Exoplanets
9. UNAWE Universe in a Box DIY Guide
10. Witness the Launch of NASA's LADEE Mission to the Moon
11. Upcoming events

Please send us your input to info@astro4dev.org for the next newsletter which we will aim to send out on Friday 30th August 2013.

1) Twitter account of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach

The @astronomy2009 twitter account is no longer in use. Please update to @IAU_Outreach if you want to get the latest news!

Click here to follow us: https://twitter.com/IAU_Outreach

2) IAU Office of Astronomy for Development Newsletter #2

The second IAU-OAD Newsletter has been published and covers the period from April to June 2013. Read it at: http://www.astro4dev.org/contactus/newsletters/

3) UNAWE workshop: register before July 31st

The EU Universe Awareness International Workshop 2013 will bring together educators, teachers, astronomers, active members of the UNAWE network and experts, to share ideas, techniques and resources that have been developed by the programme thus far. One goal is to consolidate existing UNAWE astronomy education and communication resources for very young children. Participants will also discuss, in depth, the role of astronomy and space science in early childhood development, curricula development and evaluation. Evaluating the long-term effectiveness of exposing very young children to inspirational and motivational astronomy activities will also be discussed.Registration closes July 31st! More at http://www.unawe.org/events/workshop2013/

4) ESA Summer of Code in Space 2013 (SOCIS 2013)

The SOCIS 2013 programme has resumed! Students have until the 4th of August to apply. ESA Summer of Code in Space 2013 (SOCIS 2013) is a program run by the European Space Agency. It aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. More at: http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2013/

5) "A Touch of the Universe" for the visually impaired: request your kits!

The deadline for applying for kits of "A Touch of the Universe" is August 11th 2013!

Please tell your collaborators and partners to apply for it via the following link: http://bit.ly/12QnVkB. More information about the project can be found at:
http://www.astro4dev.org/blog/category/tf2/visually-impaired/

6) Wave at Saturn: NASA picture release

"Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space. NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. It was the first time Cassini's highest-resolution camera captured Earth and its moon as two distinct objects."

More at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-229#1

7) Twelfth National Festival on Popular Astronomy, Algeria

The Sirius Astronomy Association from Algeria is organizing an astronomy meeting for amateurs. It is the Twelfth National Festival on Popular Astronomy, and the largest multinational gathering of its kind in North Africa and even perhaps in Africa. Although national in essence, it is largely international in view of the large participation of amateurs from Europe, the Middle East, and unfortunately not enough from Africa. This year's theme is "Mars, the next Frontier" although contributions in all aspects of Astronomy and space science are welcomed. The gathering is multilingual although French and Arabic speaking people may be more in tune.

More at: http://siriusalgeria.net/salon013.htm

8) Guide to Resources for Teaching about Exoplanets

A new annotated guide to written, web, and audio-visual resources for teaching about planets orbiting other stars is now available for high-school and college instructors, their students, informal educators, and astronomy enthusiasts. Materials in the guide to this rapidly-changing branch of astronomy include video and audio files of lectures and interviews with leading scientists in the field, phone and tablet apps, a citizen-science website, popular-level books and articles, and much more. Published by the NASA Astrophysics Education and Outreach Forum and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the guide can be found as a PDF file at: http://www.astrosociety.org/education/astronomy-resource-guides/the-search-for-planets-around-other-stars/

9) UNAWE Universe in a Box DIY Guide

Do it Yourself Universe in a Box: For personal, non-commercial use, UNAWE also offers the possibility to build your own Universe in a Box. Please download the DIY guide and source files from http://unawe.org/resources/guides/universeinaboxdiyguide/

10) Witness the Launch of NASA’s LADEE Mission to the Moon

NASA will host a two-day event for 50 of its social media followers on Thursday, September 5th, and Friday, September 6th, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Va., for the launch of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit our moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere and determine if dust is being lofted into the lunar sky. Registration opens on this page at 5pm EDT on Wednesday, July 24, and closes at 5pm EDT on Wednesday, July 31st.

More at: http://www.nasa.gov/content/see-the-launch-of-nasa-s-ladee-mission-to-the-moon/

11) Upcoming events

a) Global Hands on Universe (GHOU) 2013
Date: 2 – 4 August 2013
Location: Volos, Greece (in parallel with IOAA)
More information: http://www.globalhou.net/

b) ESA Summer Workshop for Science Teachers
Date: 20 – 23 August 2013
Location: Noordwijk , the Netherlands
More information: http://www.esa.int/Education/Teachers_Corner/ESA_Summer_Workshop_for_Teachers_2013

c) International Meteor Conference 2013
Date: 22 – 25 August 2013
Location: Poznan, Poland
More information: http://www.imo.net/imc2013/welcome

d) European Planetary Science Congress 2013
Date: 8 – 13 September
Location: London, UK
More information: http://www.epsc2013.eu/

e) Universe Awareness (UNAWE) International Workshop
Date: 7 – 11 October 2013
Location: Heidelberg, Germany
More information: www.unawe.org

f) Communicating Astronomy with the Public conference 2013
Date: 14 – 18 October 2013
Location: Warsaw, Poland
More information: http://www.communicatingastronomy.org/old/cap2013/

for more events, please visit the IAU Outreach Events Calendar at: http://iau.org/public/events/