Dear Fellow Communicators,
This month we invite you to “Go south” with us and discover how Europe came to choose Chile as its base to explore the southern sky. Every three weeks between now and October 2012 we will be releasing a special ESOcast episode dedicated to ESO’s 50th anniversary. These episodes will offer you a preview of our anniversary documentary, which will be released on DVD and blu-ray later this year, accompanied by an anniversary book. The special ESOcast episodes are among the most spectacular ever produced by our department so we are happy to share the first one with you. We hope you will enjoy accompanying us on a 50 year-long journey of exploration.
Staying on the same topic, we have recently updated our Facebook Timeline with 50 easy-to-navigate highlights from our history. If you want to present historical information for your organisation this is an easy and fun way to do it.
And since we are talking social media, note that we have just changed our Twitter username from @ESO_Observatory to the simpler and more memorable @ESO. We noticed that the shorter and more intuitive account was unused, and requested Twitter to transfer it to us.
If you own an iOS device, don’t miss an amazing app called Star Walk, which now features many ESO and ESA/Hubble images thanks to a partnership we arranged with the developers. The images are also optimised for the new iPad’s retina display.
Another outreach project we are launching along with organisations in the United Kingdom is a new European Astronomy Journalism Prize. This will be run by ESO in collaboration with the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and in conjunction with the Association of British Science Writers and the Royal Astronomical Society. With this award we hope to increase the coverage of European astronomy results by encouraging journalists to write more — and better — on the topic. You can read about the details of the award here.
As some of you may already know the education and Public Outreach Department of ESO also handles the communication for ESA/Hubble and for the IAU Press Office. We therefore take the opportunity to use this newsletter to highlight a new competition we are running for ESA, called Hubble’s Hidden Treasures. It is a great chance to have your audiences engage directly with Hubble data and learn more about how those spectacular space photos are made.
Finally, the presentations from the Communicating Astronomy with the Public conference that took place last year in Beijing, China are now available online. Happy browsing!
Let’s reach new heights in astronomy together,
Lars Lindberg Christensen (lars@eso.org)
Head ESO education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD)
|
29 March 2012: A new journalism competition to capture and promote inspirational coverage of European astronomy is launched today (Thursday 29 March) at the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2012 [1]. The prize is ...
|
| Read more |
|
28 March 2012: Astronomers used observational data from ESO’s telescopes and instruments to write a total of 783 refereed papers during 2011. This is an all-time high in ESO’s history. ESO remains the ...
|
| Read more |
|
28 March 2012: The latest edition of ESO’s quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. Find out the latest from ESO, with topics ranging from new instruments to the latest discoveries. Highlights ...
|
| Read more |
|
22 March 2012: The internet is buzzing with talk about the Retina display on the third generation iPad and we can see no better challenge for it than exploring the details of astronomical ...
|
| Read more |
|
19 March 2012: The latest issue of the free magazine Science in School is now available online and in print. As always, the European journal dedicated to science teachers and educators offers numerous ...
|
| Read more |
|
28 March 2012: Andy Bell, lead singer of the famous British synthpop band Erasure, visited Paranal Observatory in February. Andy spent one day onsite, during which time footage was shot of him singing ...
|
| Read more |
|
28 March 2012: The award-winning editorial and commercial photographer Max Alexander is currently visiting ESO’s sites in Chile, portraying ESO’s staff as part of a collaboration for ESO’s 50th Anniversary. Max is now ...
|
| Read more |
|
21 March 2012: Leading up to ESO's 50th anniversary in October 2012, we are releasing eight special ESOcasts, each a chapter from the movie Europe to the Stars -- ESO's First 50 Years ...
|
| View and/or download |
