In 2009 the world will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope to study the night sky. 2009 is also the anniversary of many other important dates in the history of science, such as the publishing of Kepler's Astronomia Nova, Huygens' Systema Saturnium, and the first moon landing.

For this celebration astronomers around the world will be inviting people like you, and your friends and family, to look up in wonder at the night sky, and to seek out answers to some of life's biggest questions.

This website will provide everything you need to know about what is happening in the International Year of Astronomy 2009 in the UK, making the Universe yours to discover!

This 2-frame wide field mosaic shows the familiar Belt stars of Orion, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, together with the Horsehead and Flame nebulae which lie right next to Alnitak.  The Flame nebula lies at a distance of around 1,300 light years.  As you can see, the whole of the Belt star region is full of dust and reflection nebulosity, but it is the red emission nebula IC434 illuminating the Horsehead region that dominates the picture. This 3 x 3 degree image was captured from the New Forest Observatory using a Takahashi Sky 90 [3 and a half inch] refractor and an SXVF-M25C one-shot colour CCD camera.  Three separate data sets were taken for each of the two frames - RGB (one-shot colour) as well as narrowband H-alpha and narrowband H-beta.  All 6 individual data sets were then digitally combined by Noel Carboni (Florida, U.S.A.) to give the resulting deep-sky panorama.  The total exposure time was close to 40-hours, with a similar amount of time taken for the image processing.

Watch the new IYA2009 trailer!