Project leader: Quang Nguyen Luong, quang.nguyen-luong@nao.ac.jp
Project location: Vietnam
Project description:
The last two IAU grants has done something that is unprecedented: we manage to get the entire amateur astronomy communities together to work together and enjoy astronomy together. The two annual meetings have attracted almost 100 participants from more than 10 cities each times. We are also proud to provide students resources to astronomy & space educational programs in Vietnam and abroad. Among all astronomy and space students who are studying in Vietnam or abroad, almost half of them grew up from these amateur clubs.
The science and technology platform in Vietnam is still very much primitive. Considering the emotion and the expectation of students from the last two years events, we believe that astronomy is the key to waken up the awareness of Vietnamese, especially the youth, for science and technology.
Taking the chance that next year is the international year of light, we are going to organise a nation-wide activities to nurture the children’s love of the sky. Beside the normal activities as last years, we plan to deploy two new activities. The first one is to translate and publicise the Galileo’s masterpiece “Sidereus Nuncius” into Vietnamese (draft can be found here: www.cita.utoronto.ca/~qnguyen/starrymessengerVN.pdf) besides distributing Galileo telescope and teaching the public to make the Galileo telescope.
The second activity is inviting two prominent Vietnam expatriat
astronomers: Jane Luu (discoverer of the Kuiper Belt Object) and Nguyen Trong Hien (BICEP2 instrumentation group supervisor) to participate with us in reaching out to students. They are the two most influential astronomers to the public in Vietnam right now.
Another important tast is to maintain the union of all amateur clubs.
About the project leader:
Dr. Quang Nguyen Luong is an EACOA (East Asian Core Observatory Association) Fellow at the ALMA Office, National Astronomy Observatory of Japan. Dr. Quang Nguyen Luong is the Space and Aeronautics Admission Consultant for University of Science and Technology of Ha Noi (USTH), the Scientific Advisor of Vietnam Amateur Astronomy Clubs Association (Vietastro), as well as Project leader of 2013, 2014 TF3 funded project titled “Coordinating Astronomy for Public Outreach in Vietnam: Bringing Astronomy to Remote Areas”.