Yesterday we had a visit in Linz from Suhel Ahmeti and his collegue Joseph Joe-Nicola from Kosovo. Suhel is the NC of Kosovo and together with his club at time he is preparing to renovate the old observatory from Prishtina. So he was very interested to hear about our outreach activities and running an public observatory. We organized a shortdated programm for our guests. So we visited together our little observatory "Kepler Sternwarte Linz". Of course we used our little NC-meeting for beating the drums for Global Astronomy Month 2022 ;-)
Suhel gave to our President, Günther Martello, an interesting hospitality gift.
The "Hyjnesha in Fron" ("She-god on throne") called replica of a clay figure from the Neolithic Vinča-Kultur. (5000 bC) from Ulpiana, the predecessor city from Prishtina. Today this figure is in the municipal coat of arms of Prishtina.
Suhel said joking, with a wink, this is our "Alien from Kosovo" - and he is a little bit right ;-)
My friend Erich Meyer the well known international Kepler expert from Linz made a tour with us on the tracks of Johannes Kepler through Linz and we visited some famous places where he lived.
Here is a
link to a very spezial
APOD from 15th May 2018 when we celebrated in Linz the dedection of Kepler's third law. Of course Erich told the full story to our guests.
After a lunch we visited the famous
Ars Electronica Center (AEC) in Linz, where the director of AEC, Andreas Bauer, Vize president of our association, organized a English spoken Highlight-tour for our guests and of course we had a visit at the so called deep space, where 8K projectors generate impressive views on the wall and even on the floor. The so called software UNIVIEW generates a realtime 3D planetarium, so you can travel virtually through the solar system and the the whole visible universe.
After a coffeebrake in the afternoon we made a short visit to our cathedral where are some, for churches unusual glas windows installed. In one of the old windows we can see Johannes Kepler carrying a telescope under his arms. One part of the church has some interesting modern glas windows showing ornaments generated by datas from radio telescopes.
Summarizing I can say we had a nice meeting and we will stay in contact with our new astronomical friends from Astronomy Club of Kosovo and I am sure I will visit them in the near future to see how their efforts to establish an public observatory are developing. In times like now our slogan "One People, One Sky" becomes more important than ever. I am convinced that only collaboration in all fields can help us building a peaceful world for the future.
Joe