European Association for Astronomy Education

"Find a Sundial...Show it to us!" project has announced the winners of the Sundial Contest for the school year 2011-2012.

Group competition has been awarded to a school in Spain, while individual competition has been awarded to a Bulgarian student.

Learn more about the competition, the winners and see a gallery of sundials from this year's contest at http://www.eaae-astronomy.org/sundials-project/.

Source: NASA Sounds

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon.
Image credits: NASA.

Historic and interesting sounds and sound sites from NASA space missions are available for download as ringtones or on your computer for events, errors, alarms and notifications.

The public now can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong's, "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," every time they get a phone call. A new NASA web page now has a collection of more than 35 different sounds, each approximately 20 seconds. Examples include:

- Apollo 13's John "Jack" Swigert commenting "Houston, we have a problem"
- Crackle of the historic last launch of the space shuttle, STS-135
- Segments from President John F. Kennedy's historic moon speech
- Sound wave conversions of the light curve waves created by stars discovered by NASA's Kepler mission and other sounds of planets and stars

"NASA has been making historic sounds for over 50 years," said Jerry Colen, NASA App project manager at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Now we're making some of these memorable sounds easy to find and use."(visit the site)

Once again in 2011 EAAE has launched Eratosthenes Experiment. This year was coordinated by Anna Artigas and Guido Robotti.

On June 21^st, 2011, school teachers and students from all over Europe made their measurements and launched the results on the EAAE's webpage of the project. Some teachers also participated on the videoconference promoted for schools to cooperate about the event.

Students measuring the shadow of a gnomon at Legnica, Poland.

Most schools, from Northern Europe to Southern Europe were able to measure the shadow of the Sun due to good weather conditions in most of Europe. Only Stafford Grammar School in the United Kingdom reported bad weather conditions.

A School Group measuring the shadow of a gnomon at Batalha, Portugal.

Nonetheless the measurement of average of Earth's perimeter was 39864.64 km, a measurement that has a 0.358% error compared to the accepted value of 40007.86 km for the meridional perimeter.

During the video conference that was controlled by Alexandre Costa and Jordi Delpeix Borrell, students from different schools shared their results and the motivation they had in participating this event. All of them showed the interest in participating next year.

A scene from the beginning of the videoconference with some of the participants.

Students had possibility of presenting pictures and some schools also presented videos they already had posted on YouTube about the event.

Sharing a YouTube video nearly at the end of the videoconference..

We hope next edition of Eratosthenes is even better.

Source: ESA

How do they know it’s Easter? Ever wondered how the exact dates of the Easter break are chosen? Easter Sunday can fall anytime between 22 March and 25 April and, thanks to European observations of the Sun that go back many centuries, the exact date can be predicted as far ahead as 4099 AD.(read source)