EUROPA 2009 - ASTRONOMY II

Motif: Parts of the Universe taken by the Hubble Telescope INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY AND THE ZAGREB ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY The astronomical observatory is located in the premises of Popov toranj (Priest’s Tower), the defence fortress built in the first half of the 13 century, in the Zagreb Old City (Upper Town), Opatička 22, and opened to public on 5 December 1903. The Observatory was founded on the initiative of dr. Oton Kučera (1857 – 1931) under the auspices of the Croatian Society for Natural Sciences, which since the year it was founded in 1885 was home to numerous naturalists and amateur naturalists in Croatia. Its main purpose is educational and disseminating information pertaining to the natural sciences, astronomy, astronautics and similar activities. In honour of the Observatory in Zagreb, German astronomer Max Wolf and discoverer August Kopf from Heidelberg Observatory, named the Asteroid number 589 Croatia. Asteroid is measuring in diameter 93 kilometres. In course of 105 years of its activity the Astronomical Observatory represented the gathering point of experts and amateurs active in disseminating information on topics of astronomy and astronautics, nowadays also in contemporary astrophysics, but also actively participating in educational, professional and scientific work. In the second half of the 20 century the Astronomical Observatory took astronomy to schools and organised astronomy sections and astronomy groups in schools on the entire territory of Croatia. The Astronomical Observatory regularly conducts programs designed for young persons, seminars and summer astronomy schools, weekly lectures for public audiences and night sky telescope observations. The Observatory is opened to school groups for weekly visits, lectures and observations of the sky through telescope. The Observatory participates actively in other programs as seminars for astronomy teachers in elementary and secondary schools. Man and Space, popular and scientific journal is published by the Observatory for more than half a century and Bolid a popular and professional journal since 1974. For more than two decades the Observatory published Homo kaj Cosmo (Man and Space), the unique journal in the world published on Esperanto. The Observatory is engaged from time to time in publishing educational issues as sky charts, Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, chart of the Universe, even some professional and popular books. Monitoring of the Sun has been conducted without interruption and results are published in media. The Astronomical Observatory cooperates with domestic and international astronomers and astrophysicists on scientific and popular basis. A first telescope (so called Kučera telescope) is presently on display at the entrance into the Planetarium of the Technical Museum in Zagreb, second telescope was installed at the Observatory in 1966 and the third sophisticated telescope was installed in summer 2007. At the end of 2008 a telescope for measuring neutron radiation was installed at the Observatory, and is one in the network of same telescopes installed in several countries of Asia and Europe. International Astronomical Union – IAU was founded in 1919, uniting national astronomical societies from different states around the globe. IAU acts as internationally recognised authority for discovering of and naming of celestial bodies: stars, planets, asteroids and others, and has a mission to promote astronomy in all its aspects. The organisation consisting of professional astronomers has friendly relationship with astronomical societies of amateurs, and is assisting and directing them within the frame of their possibilities. IAU is a member of the Council for Science (ICSU). On the UNESCO and IAU initiative the International Year of Astronomy – IYA 2009 -was proclaimed by the United Nations on 20 December 2007. The motto of all the manifestations included in IYA 2009 is: «The Universe, yours to discover». The basic idea is to assist people all around the globe to understand and discover our place in the Universe. The motive for selecting the year 2009 is extremely important for our civilisation, it celebrates the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of his telescope in 1609, enabling people to penetrated into the depth of a Universe hidden to human eye. The opening ceremony of the IYA 2009 was held in Paris on 15 and 16 January 2009. Over one hundred states joined the IYA 2009 project, Croatia joined IYA 2009 too. The basic motive behind the IYA is to enable great number of people around the world to look out through the telescope and remember Galileo and his first homemade telescope he used to look out to the sky. IYA will serve as a platform for informing the public about the latest astronomical discoveries. One of the aims is also a fight against the overuse of artificial light, so called artificial light pollution and its negative effect of taking away the sky from the Earthlings. National central point of all the scheduled events in Croatia is the Astronomical Observatory on Priest’s Tower in Zagreb, organised under the auspices of the Croatian Astronomical Society (ACS). The Croatian Astronomical Society co-ordinates work of all astronomical societies in Croatia. The Zagreb Astronomical Observatory is in charge of organizing county and state competitions in astronomy. Along with the Croatian Astronomical Society, schools and faculties and around twenty astronomical societies all over Croatia, and the Observatory on Višnjan, the Zagreb Observatory plans to intensify popular, professional a scientific activities.