United
States President Barack Obama will welcome skywatchers to the White House
Wednesday for an evening of stargazing with the First Family.
A group of
professional and amateur
astronomers will set up more than 20 telescopes on the White House lawn
during the presidential star party to mark the International Year of Astronomy
(IYA2009), a celebration of the 400th anniversary of famed astronomer Galileo Galilee's
first use of a telescope to observe
the night sky. President Obama, his family and a group of local
middle-school students are expected to attend.
Top targets
on the celestial menu: The craters and mountains of Earth's moon, Jupiter and
its own moons, and other stars and objects.
The White
House star party will begin Wednesday night at around 8 p.m. EDT (0000 Oct. 8
GMT) with a kickoff address by President Obama to be broadcast live on NASA TV.
It corresponds with World Space Week, which began Sunday and ends Oct. 10
According to a White House press office statement, the star
party is aimed at highlighting "the President's commitment to science,
engineering, and math education as the foundation of this nation's global
technological and economic leadership and to express his support for astronomy
in particular — for its capacity to promote a greater awareness of our place in
the universe, expand human knowledge, and inspire the next generation by
showing them the beauty and mysteries of the night sky."
The star
party is organized by the White House, Office of Science, Technology and
Policy, and NASA — but the idea behind it originated with Chicago-based amateur
astronomer Audrey Fischer and a six-month campaign by the IYA2009 team.
"We're
delighted that President Obama will take a break from his pressing terrestrial
concerns to personally witness some of the same celestial spectacles that
Galileo first studied 400 years ago and that revolutionized our understanding
of the universe and our home planet," said Stephen Pompea, the U.S. program
director for IYA2009 and an astronomer with the National Optical Astronomy
Observatory (NOAO), in a statement.
The White
House star party is just one of several space-themed events this week.
In addition
to numerous World Space Week celebrations, NASA plans to crash a probe into
the moon on Friday morning in a bid to search for hidden caches of water
ice at the lunar south pole.
Professional
and amateur astronomers around the world, as well as several space-based
observatories and spacecraft, are eagerly awaiting the planned lunar impact.
Meanwhile,
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte will perform
a poem from space Friday night at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 Oct. 10 GMT) as part of
his campaign to increase awareness for global water issues. Laliberte, a
Canadian billionaire, paid a reported $35 million for a trip to the
International Space Station and has organized a series of simultaneous concerts
and performances through his ONE DROP Foundation to tie into his orbital poetic
reading.
Laliberte
launched to the space station on Sept. 30 alongside two professional
astronauts. He is due to land Oct. 11 on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central
Asia.
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