Beauty Without Borders(BWB) is a project of Astronomers Without Borders and Sidewalk Astronomers. Through BWB, we hope to share the beauty of the celestial events. Last year we spent an evening with Venus and this year we are celebrating the Opposition of Mars.

So this week, grab a scope, call some friends and head out to the sidewalk and share the beauty of Mars with your community and join amatuers around the world. We have a blog set up where you can post event reports and share  your experiences.
 http://beautywithoutborders-mars2010.blogspot.com/

ISAN

We hope everyone will take part in ISAN on March 20. The 4th ISAN should be more successful than any in the past as we have so many more members.

We've added a page to this website for ISAN and you can start posting your events at any time. We also posted some flyers for handouts during the event that you can customize with your local contact information.

GAM
Global Astronomy Month (GAM) will be held this April. Consisting of hundreds of events worldwide and a variety of online activies, GAM will once again bring the worldwide focus to astronomy.

GAM is an Astronomers Without Borders event, but because so much of it will involve public outreach, it is the perfect project for the Sidewalk Astronomers to support.  We'll be posting more information in the coming weeks but its never to early to start planning your events.

John Dobson on Facebook
We've made John a Facebook page and he has logged in a couple of times to check it. www.facebook.com/johnldobson is the address and we ask if you have greetings or photos of that you'd like to share, please do so. Since John isn't traveling as much as he used to, it is a good way for him to keep in contact with everyone.  

We did have a few people go out for DUSK on Dec 31, but many had to cancel because of weather.
It seems like the most successful events were in the Philippines and here in the Los Angeles area.

We have this from Armando Lee:
We participated in the Dusk of IYA here in Pasay City Philippines last December 31, 2009. Free public viewing session was given from 7pm to 10pm infront of Astrocamp Observatory in SMBY Park in SM Mall of Asia Complex. Views of Jupiter and the Galilean satellites were given from Dusk to around 8:30pm then views of the Moon through an apochromat telescope was given up to 10pm. Live webcast of the event was done via www.justin.tv/medlee
Video clips of the event can be seen in that website. There were approximately 500 people that participated and we were blessed with clear sky all throughout the event.

And here in California, we had a pretty good turn out.
Early in the evening, John Dobson, Inara Scwharts, Mike Sepulveda and I took two telescopes out, one 8" and one 10". We set up near Barney's on 1st street and had about 50 people stop to look at Jupiter. We stayed there from about 5pm until about 6:30, when we moved up closer to the theater entrance to observe the Moon.

We were joined by Sidewalk Astronomers George Willis and Leslie Kendall, as well as Sawsan and her son Ben. Sawsan's older son had built a telescope with John a few years ago.

Overall, we had about 300 people get a chance to observe. Everyone was very excited by the moons of Jupiter and our own Blue Moon!

We did have a couple of other reports, but they weren't posted on the blog and the information isn't readily available. While we can't count DUSK as a major success, we did give about 1000 people a chance to look through a telescope that night.