And we are back live with the Virtual Telescope with 100 Hrs of Remote Observing, this should now be changed to 124 hrs! Gianluca has set up the solar scope and we are observing the Sun, LIVE through the webcast, and the Virtual Telescope web site:

http://virtualtelescope.bellatrixobservatory.org/100harealtime.html

Of course this is the closing event for the VT but you have to hand it to Gianluca, he is has done fantastic job at opening up the universe for us all to access during these past few days, he deserves a medal!

Some shocking news that has greeted me just now, that Italy has been struck by a devastating Earthquake and many are injured and worse. My first reaction is my best friend took a flight back to Pisa yesterday and I am hoping that the earthquake there didn’t hit them as hard, but my thoughts are going out to the people who have lost their homes and their lives, this is just simply very, very sad news. And I’m hoping of course that everyone I know in Italy has not been affected by this!!!

To top this all, me being typical me left my computer running when I was following the Virtual Telescope 100 hrs of remote observing session and fell asleep, the 3 days of continuous activities must have wiped me out! I’m getting far too old for this sort of thing these days! But I hear that the Gianluca Masi was observing at the time during the earthquake and was also making an image at the time, so here it is, an astronomical image taken during an earthquake, 

The image of M13 taken by the VT during the Italian earthquake at 3.30am Italian time

I’m also hoping now that Gianluca and co are ok !

Here we go again, Gianluca Masi has managed to open the observatory to begin the observations with the Virtual Telescope and for the time being we are observing the bright objects visible while we wait for the skies to further clear as there is alot of patchy cloud around.

So far we’ve viewed Saturn again and here we have some images of the Moon, over the weekend the Virtual Telescope has enjoyed over 15,000 visitors during 100 hrs of remote observing so this a record in its own right!

Whilst munching on my dinner in the midst of 100 hrs of remote observing my son had to point out that an olive that I was about to eat looked a little bit like a scary dinosaur. On further inspection I had to agree that it looked too good to eat so I’m  sharing this photo with you now, it still makes me laugh just looking at it

: D !!!

scary olives!!!

Its the final leg of 100 Hours of Astronomy and we are back observing with the Virtual Telescope. Unfortunately right now it is cloudy but we are all hoping that it will clear. Yesterday the skies cleared and we had clear skies but patchy cloud so we are hoping for the same again.

In the meantime here is an animation from earlier today of the solar observations taken with the telescope.

http://virtualtelescope.bellatrixobservatory.org/sun_5april09_1400.gif

So most of us by now who are have been participating in the 100 Hours of Astronomy events are in real need of some rest, I’m feeling fine at the moment as I’ve just had a nice cup of tea but I have the feeling that most of you out there who have been burning

the midnight oil arranging and participating in all of the 100 hours events are in some dire need of rest and coffee. Shame our coffee cup on the Cosmic Diary page is only an image and not real espresso!

For now the live webcast from the Virtual Telescope for the Solar Observing session has come to an end due to the high levels of cloud around surrounding the Bellatrix Observatory in Italy, but will return later in around 4 hours from now for the night time observing sessions.

So for now its time to do some more Galaxy Classifying  through Galaxy Zoo and work on the Astrokit website ready for the new school term.

By the way, this is live and you can access this directly from the VT website where the live webcam is broadcasting the direct views of the Sun, and here is a lovely day too! (this is a first for Manchester you know!)

http://virtualtelescope.bellatrixobservatory.org/100harealtime.html

And we’re back observing LIVE for 100 Hours of Remote Observing from the Virtual Telescope.

Today is the event Sun day and we are observing the Sun together with several events worldwide organised for this very special event for 100 Hours of Astronomy

Hi everyone and a good morning from Manchester where it is a beautiful sunny day. There is a lot of thin haze cloud around and I am online now checking out the events for today.

Gianluca Masi tells me that there is a live show on today at 9am UT for Solar Observing so I will be keeping you all updated on that, and will be also atempting to classify as many Galaxy Zoo objects as possible so if Isee any strange and wonderful objects in there I will post them here also.

By the way everyone, I am writing a set of articles for the Science Newspaper to report on the events and activities taking place during the 100 hours of astronomy events and if you have something that you want to tell us about, please send your info to me so that I can include this in the feature articles. The Science Newspaper has a dedicated section to IYA 2009 so anything you think is worthwhile to share with the rest of the world will be appreciated  !

You can reach me at sotiratrifourki@hotmail.com and the Science Newspaper at http://www.sciencenewspaper.eu