IFAS Observing Challenges

Helo,

I' have just found IFAS Observing Challanges. It is really great work!

Is it possible to translate it to other language (Czech / Slovak)? We would like to use it for non-commercial use. Translations would be placed at www.astro.cz/ - web portal of Czech astronomical society (CAS).

If you have troubles with high bandwith (due to downloads of obs. challanges), I can ask CAS if it's possible to create a mirror site on our server. Let me know if you are interested.

have a nice day.
Karel Mokry, webmaster of www.astro.cz/

Hi Karl,
welcome to these Irish Astronomy boards! I hope you can read our bad English ok!
I am the Secretary of the Novice Observing Challenge. There is also Michael O'Connell, Secretary of the Messier Observing Challenge, and John Flannery, Secretary of the Binocular Observing Challenge. Other members of the group are Shane Culleton (founder) and Albert White (ISS Challenge).

I understand what you are asking, but the problem is that none of us are very good at speaking other European languages. With the size and scale of each of the Challenges, it would take a long, long time to translate into another language, even via internet sites like babelfish.com, or Yahoo translaters. I think it is something we were going to look into, as from the download history on irishastronomy.org, we have been 'hit' almost 16,000 times on this site for downloads of the Observing Challenges alone. That history tells us that many people from many countries around the world have downloaded them. Trouble is, they are in English!

We do encourage participation, even if only a small part from the handbooks, in your respective countries and astronomy clubs. We have no problem with people using sections of them for their own benefit, and the benefit of like-minded astronomers, as long as the source of the material is credited correctly.

In the meantime, why don't you give us some ideas on how we can accommodate foreign language astronomy enthusiasts like yourself! Do you even have a resource that can help us to accurately translate from English into Czech for you? I see from your website that there is an English version, which is great! If we can do the same with the Challenges into Czech/Slovak...

And thank you for the positive feedback!

Regards,

Seanie.

On this note - were the Solar, Double Star and Lunar challenges launched at COSMOS? If so, when are the PDF's arriving on the site? I'd love to see the Lunar one

On this note - were the Solar, Double Star and Lunar challenges launched at COSMOS? If so, when are the PDF's arriving on the site? I'd love to see the Lunar one

I havn't recieved any PDFs, as soon as I do I'll upload them.

thaks for your answer. There is small misunderstanding - we are able to translate challanges, but we are not sure if you have some copyright on it.

If it is possible, can you provide us sources from which pdf's were created? That would help a lot. Of course, credit to original authors would remain.

english version of astro.cz needs some improvements, but there is lot of other work on czech pages...

regards,
Karel Mokry

Hi Karel,

Welcome to IFAS! I'm glad to hear you found the handbooks of interest. When we set out to write them, I don't think any of us though they would have proven so popular. What surprised us the most was the interest from outside Ireland.

Would you be able to provide some background information on your club please? I think we'd all be interested to hear about our fellow astronomers on mainland europe.

Clear skies,