International Year of Astronomy 2009 - Southern Skies

This coin is being put out in honor of a good friend of mine, Steve Ahrens, who passed away in the summer of 2009. Among other things, he was an avid amateur astronomer, and the driving force behind the Star Quest star parties that have been held for the past 6 years at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. Steve was about the most jovial and life-loving person I have ever met. In his most angry of moments he would only frown. Then start laughing 5 minutes later. This coin would like to travel to other astronomy observatories, either amateur or professional, as well as star parties, and have its photo taken there. Then move it to a new cache. Barring the observatory and star party visits, this coin is to share a little history of telescopes (see 'About this item' below) with geocachers far and wide. Given the number of geocoins that simply vanish from caches, a pox on anyone who picks this coin up to keep for their own.

In 1609, Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to objects in the sky, and marveled at what he saw: mountains and craters never before seen on the Moon, phases in Venus similar to that of the Moon, rings around Saturn, four moons and cloud bands on Jupiter, sunspots on the Sun, and stars that were otherwise invisible to the unaided human eye. In observing these objects, Galileo understood more of the universe than anyone of or prior to his time. Note: Galileo did *not* invent the telescope, but he was the first person to turn it from terrestrial viewing to celestial viewing. In that same year Galileo was observing the heavens, Johannes Kepler published his work "Astronomia nova", a ten year project in which he studied in detail the motions of Mars and thus discovered the fundamental laws of planetary motions. Where previous astronomers had relied on geometric models to explain the observed positions of the planets, Kepler sought for and discovered physical causes for planetary motion. He was able to prove with rigorous scientific arguments the proposition Nicolaus Copernicus made in 1543 that the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun. The front (back?) of this coin shows the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope. It is operated by the Anglo-Australian Observatory and situated at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. The Southern Cross is outlined in the sky above.