I'm currently reading (and highly recommend) Timothy Ferris' Seeing in the Dark. It includes an interview with artist James Turrell, who expresses surprise that we don't celebrate such worldview-changing discoveries as the discovery of galaxies, or the nature of the solar system. Which got me thinking, if we could commemorate one event with an International Astronomy Day, which date should it be? (I know there's already Astronomy Day, but I think it was chosen arbitrarily, and isn't the anniversary of anything).

To start the ball rolling, I have a couple of suggestions:

- Date of publication of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

- Date of the first stellar spectrogram (the birth of modern astronomy?)

- May 28. On this date in 585, the battle between the Medes and the Lydians stopped because of a total solar eclipse. Because of our knowledge of astronomy, we know the exact date of this battle.

I'm sure there are a lot more good ideas out there.

Astronomy Day was April 24th this year...


http://www.astroleague.org/al/astroday/astroday.html

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"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

I know. Like I said:

I was thinking "is there an event we'd like to commemorate?"

It just seems silly to me to pick an aniversary date of something. Astronomy doesn't have a birthday. It's once of the few human creations that essentially pre-dates humanity. If you're want to celebrate something astronomical, try to calculate the date of the big bang. Then we could celebrate the birth of the universe.

__________________
"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

How about January 1st? I mean isn't that the day the Big Bang happened? That's why everyone sets off fireworks at midnight. 8) :wink: