At the behest of the global physics community, the United Nations has declared 2015 to be the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015), celebrating — among other anniversaries — 100 years since Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity and 50 years since Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, the “afterglow” of the Big Bang. IYL 2015 is a global initiative that highlights to the citizens of the world the importance of light and optical technologies in their lives, for their futures, and for the development of society.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has taken responsibility for IYL 2015’s astronomy-related cornerstone project, called Cosmic Light, and has named the Galileoscope educational telescope kit a key part of it. With its dual emphasis on optics and astronomy, the Galileoscope supports three of the International Year of Light’s main themes: Science of Light, Light Technology, and Light in Nature.
We originally created the Galileoscope under the auspices of the IAU as a cornerstone project for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 (IYA 2009), which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s introduction of the telescope to astronomy. The project has been phenomenally successful, with more than 225,000 low-cost, high-quality telescope kits (along with free educational materials, lesson plans, classroom activities, and observing guides) distributed to astronomy educators and others in more than 100 countries. Some 25,000 of these kits were distributed via our Telescopes4Teachers donation program, through which various individual and institutional donors provided Galileoscopes to schools at little or no cost to classroom teachers or school administrators.
In addition to reprising our Telescopes4Teachers donation program, we have created several larger sponsorship opportunities designed to help us reach our goal of distributing at least 100,000 Galileoscopes and support materials to middle- and high-school science educators during IYL 2015.