I had a chance to experience the differences in the seasons directly, having just returned from a meeting at the International Astronomical Union's new Office of Astronomy for Development in Cape Town, South Africa.  Leaving my home in southern California at 34 degrees north latitude, I found myself at close to 34 degrees south.  So as well as the 10-hour time change, I also went from the summer solstice to the winter solstice -- longest day of the year to the shortest.  And by coincidence, Cape Town has the same type of climate - Mediterranean - which exists in only a few places in the world.  The plants were all familiar to me; most of our garden plants come from South Africa and everything was similar, even when slightly different.  There was more than a little difference in animals the zebra and baboons I saw in South Africa aren't found roaming about in California.  But the most amazing experience for me was that it felt so much like home in so many ways except for the season.  I quickly get used to the time differences caused by changes in longitude, but I had trouble getting used to the sense that I had been transported six months ahead to a southern California late spring, with warm weather and the Sun almost overhead at noon.  It was great, but coming back to very short days, cold and rain was pretty depressing!

There are probably hundreds of organizations "without borders".  The most famous, and one of the first, is Doctors without Borders (or properly Medecins sans Frontieres for this organization based in France), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.  Reporters without Borders has been in the news quite a lot as well (naturally). Translators without Borders is a natural as well.

Along with Bob Eklund's Astropoetry Blog, two other major astropoetic initiatives accompanied GAM 2010:

Thousands of lights twinkled, not above me but below, as I descended into Los Angeles on April 4 of last year. The 24-hour Global Star Party of IYA2009's 100 Hours of Astronomy Cornerstone Project was underway.  As many as a million people viewed Saturn's rings and the Moon's craters through telescopes worldwide.  But another form of energy was also being focused that night -  the energy of tens of thousands of amateur astronomers around the world working together as darkness circled the Earth.

TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR
by Jane Taylor (1806)

April 4-6 was the turn of countries in 72-108 E longitude. SPACE contacted various other starpeace counterparts in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afganistan, and Nepal to host a 30NSP event during April 4-6. During this period few solar observations and night observations were done. SPACE proposed sun observation to Pakistani counterparts as they had security problems in gathering people at night. SPACE did a walk through for publicat the Jantar Mantar observatory on 4^th April and held observations there. A solar observation was also done for public and educators at SPACE’S office on 5^th April. Images can be found in the SPACE gallery.

Report on 30 Nights of StarPeace in Iraq

Global Astronomy Month kicks off officially in Nepal

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