07 June 2009
The year 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing by Apollo 11, which took place on 20 July 1969.
The Malta IYA committee has celebrated this anniversary by coordinating a global project, where countries from all over the world participated in imaging the moon. Each individual country imaged its portion of the moon on the night of a full moon on 9 May or 7June 2009. These images are being sent to Apolen observatory in Malta, where a collage of all the images of the moon will be produced.
The final collage of images will then be distributed around the world as collaboration between different countries of the world in the spirit of “The Moon for all Mankind", combined with the ideals of the IYA 2009, under the theme of "Bringing Astronomy to the People", in order to increase their interest in science in general.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina Planetarium Science Center (PSC) has participated in this huge event by imaging section six of the moon, on 5 June 2009, by Mr. Aymen Ibrahim, Resident Astronomer at the PSC. Mr. Aymen took the pictures from Mahmoud Public Observatory in Cairo, where the seeing conditions were hazy and there were expansive cirrus clouds.
Here are some pictures of our section of the moon; section 6, taken on 5 June:
