NASO Vice President back form IAC2011 held in Cape Town

NASO Vice President Mr. Sudeep Neupane is back from his successful participation in International Astronautic Congress 2011 (IAC2011) held in Cape Town, South Africa.He has been the IAF Youth Grant Winner for 2011.

IAF president Inaugurating IAC2011 in Cape Town

NASO Vice President Mr. Sudeep Neupane in IAC 2011 opening ceremony

IAF2011 Youth Grant Winners with Past President of IAF

IAF Youth Grant Winners for 2011 (Mr. Neupane in Nepali Topi)

During his visit form 28th Oct to 9th Oct in South Africa, he also participated in Space Generation Congress (SGC2011), UN/IAF Workshop organized before the IAC. NASO secretary and joint secretary of SGAC Mr. Suresh Bhattarai was also present with VP during SGC2011.

NASO secretary Mr. Suresh Bhattarai with VP Mr. Neupane during SGC closing dinner

Mr. Neupane with S. Ramkrishnan, Director, Liquid Propulsion System Center, ISRO

Mr. Neupane with Prof Scott Madry, International Space University (ISU) and friends

IAC is the only event where all the space science community including the directors of major space agencies are present. Mr. Neupane also presented a paper on IAC2011 in the Education and Outreach session.

NASA head Mr. Charles F. Bolden addressing at the Head of Agencies Plenary during IAC2011

A meeting had been organized at NASO office on 15th Oct for the review of successful participation of NASO representative at IAC. Mr. Neupane shared an overview of the event and his experiences during interaction with the delegates from different countries.

Cloudy Sky Ruined Project Paridhi in Celebration Co-Ed

NASO outreach team reached Celebration Co-Ed situated at Jorpati, Kathmandu on 23rd Sept with the mission to envolve school students for the Project Paridhi- measuring the earth once again.A brief introduction of the project by Mr. Suresh Bhattarai, Secretary of NASO, sufficiently excited all the students for the task. Preparation started on the scheduled time 9:00 hours in the morning. All of the participants were wishing and waiting for the clear sky. Unfortunately the cloudy sky ruined the measurement on the ground.Though the project was postponed, the programme was successfull to energize students for participating again in such educational projects.

After the programme there had been arranged a meeting with Principal of Celebration Co-Ed to discuss about the further requirements and possibilities of student projects. NASO Vice President Mr. Sudeep Neupane had also joined the meeting.

“Project Paridhi – measure the earth again” is a new collaborative works along the citizen scientists of Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Russia .

International Project Paridhi: Measuring The Earth Once Again on September 23, 2011!

We all know that the earth is round, at least this is what our teachers and their teachers have been telling us and them. We never ventured out of the paradigm of one way learning to experience the joy of learning by doing it and that too especially Science.

There have been followers of "Flat earth" theory and it used to be quite big number which it still is in some of the so called "flat earth societies". They believed that the world lived on a flat disk and one can drop into depths of sky when they venture out of the edge!!



This autumnal equinox, Nepal Astronomical Society (NASO) is collaborating with SPACE-India, Delhi which has devised this simple yet very powerful and important experiment as an international citizen science project to measure the size of the earth with shadows measurements – “Project Paridhi – measure the earth again” as a new collaborative works along the citizen scientists of Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Russia .



Under this project students will replicate and in fact take actual measurements of the shadows made by sun to gather the size of earth and its shape as done 2300 years back by astronomer Eratosthenes. This project involves reading of shadows at local noon by pair of teams on the same longitude on the globe. Our experiments from Kathmandu will align with the citizen scientists of Patna and Bhubaneswor of India that fall almost with one degree of longitude and readings taken at the same time from these cities can tell us about the size and shape of the earth.

The observation base will be extended to global arena by next winter solstice in December 2011. This project is a showcase for proving that science can be best learnt by doing.

If you are interested to join us for this exciting experiments, find us at:
Venue: Celebration Co-Ed School (http://thecelebration.edu.np/)
Address: Jorpati, Narayantar, Kathmandu, Nepal
Date: Friday, September 23, 2011
Time: 09:00-14:00 Hrs
Contact: +977-01-4910332 or +977-9841485867 (if needed)

Please be there at 08:45 Hrs, Friday, September 23, 2011 if you want to participate in the experiment. For more info on this project please visit http://www.space-india.org/spaceindiaorg/paridhi/

Lets celebrate this autumnal equinox in a different way at Celebration Co-Ed School!