Here is the eagerly awaited list of the prize winners in the "Catch a Star!" competition, as announced by the international jury during a short ceremony on Monday November 10th, 2003, at the "Physics on Stage 3" festival event (at ESTEC-ESA, Noordwijk, The Netherlands). "Catch a Star!" is a web-based all-European educational programme organised by ESO and EAAE. It took place within the European Week of Science and Technology 2003 by the European Commission.

The jury members were very impressed by the quality of many of the 132 reports received and it was a very difficult task to find the winning teams. Much attention was paid to the proper fulfillment of the rules as these were displayed on the top page of the "Catch a Star!" website. In order to be considered for a prize, the reports also had to demonstrate originality, individual initiative and thoroughness. The quality of the presentation also played a role. The jury also decided to award a number of additional prizes, and more teams are therefore receiving official recognition for their good work. There are also two "special prizes".

The jury and all who were involved in the organisation of this year's "Catch a Star!" cordially congratulate the winners! Thank you to all teams who participated! All "Official Participants" (indicated with a blue colour in the "country" and "object" tables), will in due time receive a T-shirt as a pleasant memory of this competition (*).

The reports of the 20 winning teams and those of the 6 teams that received special prizes are now available (click on the team number). Please note that due to the different formats in which the reports were delivered, there may possibly be browser incompatibilities. If you have problems with one browser, try to use another. Moreover, although care was taken to check that all links function properly, there may still be some bad ones, since the ESO web servers are UNIX-operated, while most of the reports were generated on PCs in a Window-environment.

The reports delivered by these teams will soon be displayed on the "Catch a Star!" website.

The jury also decided to present two special prizes, one to a Danish team that conceived a particularly good scientific idea, and another to five teams of 12-year old participants from a school in Portugal.

The jury also decided to give 25 additional prizes to teams who had done a very good work. They are listed below in order of their registration number. Each of them will receive the beautiful large-format ESO 2004 Calendar with a spectacular astronomical photo for each month.

(*) The organisers will soon contact the teams who have won the three top prizes that involve travels as well as the ones who have won the special prizes. The other prizes will be sent to the winning teams within some weeks. The T-shirts will be sent to all "Official Participants", but this may take a little longer. Any team that is in doubt whether they have sent their exact postal address to the organisers should please send it now to eduinfo@eso.org.