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The Sidewalk Astronomers are a public service amateur astronomy association. ALL Sidewalk Astronomers
events are for the public. We take telescopes TO the public - on street corners, public parks, in front of bookstores -wherever
there are crowds of people. We also work with other amateur astronomy organizations and take part in many international projects.
Please browse our site and feel free to contact us to learn about events in your area.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Galilean NightsFrom the reports that we are starting to get, it sounds like Galilean Nights was a great success!
Just
a reminder that if you have an article or photos that you would like to be posted in the next newsletter, please send
them to:
sidewalkastronomers@earthlink.net with "newsletter submission" in the subject line.
I hope you are all enjoying the newsletter,
if you have suggestions please send them to us a the above email.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
THE BEAUTY OF THE UNIVERSE, FROM ABOVE AND FROM BELOWThe 2009 Lennart Nilsson Award is to be presented to
American planetary
scientist Carolyn Porco and Iranian photographer and science journalist
Babak A.
Tafreshi in recognition of their photographic work, which - each
from its own perspective - recalls humankind's
place in the universe. The
prize is the world's most prestigious distinction in scientific and
medical
photography.
The annual Lennart Nilsson Award is presented in honour of the legendary
Swedish photographer,
who has been working with imagery at Karolinska
Institutet in Stockholm for decades. Like Lennart Nilsson, this
year's
recipients, Carolyn Porco and Babak A. Tafreshi, have captured worlds that
are otherwise hidden
from human sight.
The panel's citation reads as follows:
"Carolyn Porco combines the finest techniques
of planetary exploration and
scientific research with aesthetic finesse and educational talent. While
her images, which depict the heavenly bodies of the Saturn system with
unique precision, serve as tools for the
world's leading experts, they
also reveal the beauty of the universe in a manner that is an inspiration
to one and all."
"Babak A. Tafreshi's photographs reclaim a night sky that most modern
people
have lost. He takes us to remote places where the stars still look
like they did at the dawn of mankind. His work
calls to mind the beauty of
the universe and human life on our planet."
Carolyn Porco was born
in 1953 in New York. She earned her PhD in 1983
from the California Institute of Technology's Division of Geological
and
Planetary Sciences. She is currently employed at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder Colorado
where she leads CICLOPS, the laboratory
where images from NASA's and ESA's Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn are
processed, captioned and posted for public release. Carolyn Porco and her
scientific colleagues have published
numerous groundbreaking scientific
papers about Saturn and its rings and moons, and have discovered six
moons, several rings and jets of water ice erupting from the south pole of
Saturn's moon, Enceladus, all previously
unknown to astronomers. She has
previously worked with the Voyager probe and imaged Uranus and Neptune.
Carolyn Porco is also a member of the group tasked with taking pictures of
Pluto when it is finally reached by
the New Horizons probe in 2015.
Babak A. Tafreshi, photographer, science journalist and amateur
astronomer,
was born in Teheran in 1978. His photographs from his
expeditions around the world have been published in foreign
journals, on
TV and on the NASA website, and have featured in a number of international
exhibitions.
From 1997 to 2007 he was editor, and later editor-in-chief of
the Iranian astronomy magazine Nojum. Babak A. Tafreshi
is a member of the
board of Advisors of Astronomers Without Borders and a project coordinator
for the
International Year of Astronomy 2009. He is also the creator and
the driving force behind TWAN (The World At Night),
a project in which
photographers from around the world capture images of night skies as seen
above notable
landmarks of the planet."
The Lennart Nilsson Award was inaugurated in 1998 and is administered by
Karolinska Institutet. The university's president, Professor Harriet
Wallberg-Henriksson, serves as chairperson
of the Lennart Nilsson Award
Foundation and takes part in the selection of the prize winners, who are
awarded SEK 50,000 (approx. USD 7,250) each. The names of this year's
winners will be announced at the Goteborg
Book Fair in connection with a
seminar on Making the Invisible Visible. The award ceremony will be held
in the Berwald Hall in Stockholm on 28 October to coincide with Karolinska
Institutet's installation ceremony
for new professors. Lennart Nilsson
himself will also attend the festivities.
Journalists are hereby
invited to the ceremony. Please register by
contacting Karolinska Institutet at pressinfo@ki.se.
Images may be downloaded from www.lennartnilssonaward.se, and are free for
publication solely in the context of the award ceremony. Username: LNA.
Password:
spaceman.
For press photographs of the prize winners and of Professor Lennart
Nilsson, see: http://ki.se/pressimages
Karolinska Institutet is one of the leading medical universities in
Europe. Through research and education,
Karolinska Institutet contributes
to improving human health. Each year, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska
Institutet awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. For more
information, visit ki.se
The
Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and
its two onboard cameras
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists
of
scientists from the U.S., England, France, and Germany. The imaging
operations center and team leader (Dr. C. Porco)
are based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
2:39 pm edt
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