News

2011-2012 training sessions

For 2011-2012, we are offering 6 EU-HOU new training sessions (FR-2011-359-006) and 2 seminars (FR-2012-360-002) on radioastronomy. The pre-registrations and applications to national agencies are due for 16 September 2011 for the 2012 sessions.

To pre-register, you have to fill and send the following form (doc or pdf) by email to EUHOU at training@euhou.net (for the 5-days training sessions) and/or this form (doc or pdf) to trainingradio@euhou.net (for the 2-days EU-HOU seminars on radioastronomy). The UPMC administration will then send you a pre-registration certificate. With this certificate, you have to apply for a Comenius grant through your Lifelong Learning Programme national agency. When you get a grant, please confirm your registration by email to training@euhou.net (resp. trainingradio@euhou.net).

EUHOU: Hands-On Universe, Europe. Bringing frontline interactive astronomy in the classroom - 5-days training sessions (FR-2011-359-006)

Session ID:39629; 17-21 October 2011 - Centro de Interpretação Ambiental da Pedra do Sal, São Pedro do Estoril, Cascais, Portugal (pre-registration closed, but for Portuguese who cannot get a grant)

Session ID: 39745; 14-18 November 2011 - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France(pre-registration closed, but for French teachers who cannot get a grant)

Session ID: 39747; 12-16 March 2012 - Observatorio Astronomico de Coimbra, Portugal

Session ID: 39758; 2-6 April 2012 - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

Session ID: 39757; 21-25 May 2012 - Observatorio Astronomico de Coimbra, Portugal

Session ID: 39759; 4-8 June 2012 - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

EU-HOU - Connecting classrooms to the Milky Way- 2-days seminars (FR-2012-360-002)

Session ID: 39802; 6-7 February - Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

Session ID: 39908; Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Bonn, Germany

Third Parisian EU-HOU training session completed with success

As part of the Lifelong Learning Programme, the third

EU-HOU training session funded by the national Comenius agencies was held at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris from 6th to 10th June 2011. The first two sessions were held in November 2010 and January 2011. Participants came from Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Belgium, Greece, Spain and Poland. Over a period of five days, 24 teachers attended lectures on astronomy and tested exercises they can perform with pupils varying science backgrounds.

Successful Comenius school partnership

Selection of the school partnership "In orbit with Europa"

The school partnership "In orbit with Europa" coordinated by André Debackère and his pluridisciplinar team in the French middle school "Le Monteil" at Monistrol-sur-Loire has been selected by the Comenius national agencies.

This projet, gathering partners from 5 different countries (England, France, Ireland, Poland, Portugal) propose a multidisciplinar and multilateral approach of the study of asteroids.It plans to study collectively orbits, rotation and shapes of asteroids with high quality robotic telescopes, accessible through the partnerships. This initiative aims at interesting and exciting children to do science on our Solar System but also science in general and to establish a link with languages, literature, theater and art. It has obtained a very good score (96/100) and appreciation:

"An excellent project with a very well shared thematic. Very strong motivation and approach highly realistic. The impact to make science more attractive for girls is particulary important. Project extremely clear and convincing. All schools have developed experiences in the partnership with astronomical institutions. Links will be established between science and literature. Works with professionals will be conducted in each country (specify the impact of Comenius project on these organisms). The project is very ambitious. European added value is obvious. This project should be a priority."

Read hereafter some more details kindly provided by the coordinator André Debackère about the preparation of this project gathering active EU-HOU members.

Localisation of WorldWide Telescope in different languages

Localisation of the WorldWide Telescope in your language

WorldWide Telescope (or WWT) is a Virtual Planetarium by Microsoft. It is a free software, a tribute to memory of Jim Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist) ).

WWT has been designed to let ordinary people wonder the Universe as astronomers see it. Capable of using scientific images stored in the Virtual Observatory format, WWT can takes you in a virtual journey through our Universe using images from variety of ground-based and space telescopes.

welcome to WWT

In fact, WWT allows you to make your own tours. A special program, WWT Ambassadors, https://wwtambassadors.org/wwt/ run by Alyssa Goodman and Pat Udomprasert from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics helps to develop customised resources. You may even combine images from your backyard telescope with those from the Hubble in one tour, illustrated with music and narration. Does it sound like a tool which stimulates creativity?

WWT has been available in English and a few of European languages, but it can actually be easily localised (i.e. translated) into your national language. Polish Hands-On Universe team has developed instruction which you can dowload from here .

The crucial point is to translate the configuration file, englishfromwebtemplate.tdf, into your national language. It is an ordinary text file which looks like:

1 Select your language

2 This will restore user settings to their default values. Are you sure you want to proceed?

3 Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

4 You need 3d Graphics and DirectX installed to run this application

5 Your tour has unsaved changes. Do you want to save the changes before closing?

6 Tour Editor

(...)

You should replace English phrases by ones in your language, keeping the format of one phrase per line. Text should be encoded in the encoding typical for your language (for Polish we have used UTF-8), so we recommend that you use a programmer's text editor for translation, as they allow you to define encoding. Editors like MS-Word, which use their own formats to store text will not produce useful results. The package contains Polish .tdf file as an example.

After the file is translated, look into wwtinterfaceinnationallanguage.doc for instruction how to set up the interface in your national language. Note that printscreens are in Polish, so you have to imagine them in your national language.

Have fun and enjoy trips through the Universe!

October 2011 training in Germany

One 5-days training session (DE-2011-1162-001 ) "EU-HOU: Hands-On Universe, Europe. Connecting classrooms to the Milky Way " is proposed by Astropeiler Stockert e.V. (Germany) on 17-21 October 2011. It will be hold in Bad Münstereifel in Germany.

You can apply for a Comenius grant to your national Comenius agency. You should pre-register first, please contact: eu-hou@astropeiler.de

Free Live Lunar Eclipse Webcast from Bareket Observatory

A free, live webcast from Bareket Observatory in Israel will feature the total lunar eclipse on June 15, 2011.

This relatively rare central eclipse -- meaning the moon will pass near the center of Earth's shadow -- promises to be longer and darker than usual. A similar eclipse will not occur until 2018.

This should be one of the most spectacular lunar eclipses in the last years!

Movie from the eclipse:

Workshop for teachers in Portugal

A EU-HOU workshop has been organised in Portugal 9-13 April 2011. Its programme is in the framework of the EU-HOUMW (Comenius) project, based on radioastronomy for secondary schools. The 28 pilot teachers who participate will be subsequently asked to test the pedagogical material developped in the course of the project.

Globe at Night starts Feb 21st

Less of Our Light for More Star Light

Join the 6th worldwide GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign: Feb. 21 - March 6

With half of the world’s population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonderment of pristinely dark skies and maybe never will. This loss, caused by light pollution, is a concern on many fronts: safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars. Even though light pollution is a serious and growing global concern, it is one of the easiest environmental problems you can address on local levels.

light pollution (from http://www.globeatnight.org)

Discover more at http://www.globeatnight.org !!