Preparing for JENAM2010

Its 3.20am and I’m still awake. Well its a clear night here in Manchester and I can see Jupiter from my window but this is not the reason for me being awake at this time of night. This time the cause of my insomnia is an upcoming batch of funding proposals, a new toy to play with and getting grips with ( a new mac!) and the constant rewriting of my presentation for Tuesday’s JENAM 2010 session on Education and Outreach after IYA2009 in Europe http://www.jenam2010.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=78

Yes, its that time of year again for, you guessed it….. liveblogging! I’m hoping that the JENAM sessions will be as enjoyable as the sessions at the IYA opening ceremony in Paris. And this time I will be armed with better technology to get those posts up as soon as the net will allow me to post at the speed of light. Or is that the speed of push buttons?

I’m still unpacking from my trip to Cyprus where I flew out to visit family over the summer and begin the preparations for setting up Cyprus’ first Science Festival, and literally as soon as the laundry hit the washing machine packing again for Lisbon. September will be a busy month, Lisbon, Athens, and Rome all in the space of a couple of weeks, with perhaps a short trip to Munich if time allows…. straight after JENAM its the Europlanet Congress in Rome where I have no less than 3 presentations to prepare for, a record within itself me thinks!

In between the travelling an event will be taking place on the 18th September, called “International Observe the Moon Night”.  http://observethemoonnight.org/

This new event will be an opportunity to share in the exitement of exploring our satellite where a number of space missions and citizen science projects will be sharing information on the latest developments in learning about our Moon. Last April we celebrated Global Astronomy Month where a week was devoted to observing the Moon, as well as the Sun and various celestial neighbours that were visible during GAM.

There’s even a Photo contest for getting the best shot of the Moon. The Lunar and Planetary Institute have a cracking (scuse the pun – check out the cheeky squirrel on the right side of the home page!) website on all things Lunar http://www.lpi.usra.edu/mymoon/ and its worth a visit, even just to check  out what the squirrel will say next!