2 Sri Lankans Visit Europe

In recent times there were a lot of conferences, exhibitions and awareness programs taking place around the globe just focusing on astronomy and related issues. You might remember CAP2010 which was held in South Africa sometime ago in this year. I think this kind of programs help boost the world of astronomy and they help people to gain more insight into this wonderful science.

Well, today I'm gonna focus this post on a couple of events, being JENAM 2010 & Space Generation Congress 2010 (astronomy and space issues related respectively) and their Sri Lankan participation. They were held in Europe within last 8 weeks.

In fact 2 Sri Lankans made their way to Europe for these events representing Sri Lanka and basically I believe that it's been a great chance for our country to be noticed in terms of astronomy and space.

Thilina Heenatigala

The first of these was JENAM - Joint European National Astronomy Meeting, held in Lisbon, Portugal starting from 06th to 10th of last September. Thilina Heenatigala, Secretary of Sri Lanka Astronomical Association represented Sri Lanka and he presented a session on GAM - Global Astronomy Month - 'Inaugurating a New Annual Celebration of the Universe'. In addition to that there were manifold topics, being discussed on the grounds of IYA2009, its various projects and beyond IYA as well.It is also noteworthy that there was a Book Launch "Postcards from the Edge of the Universe" at the ESO stand in collaboration with JENAM 2010.

Yohan Ferreira

The other event was Space Generation Congress 2010, held in Prague, Czech Republic from 23-25 September, 2010. Space Generation Congress is the annual congress organized by The Space Generation Advisory Council, which is a global non-governmental organisation, aiming to represent students and young space professionals to the United Nations, States, and space agencies.Yohan Ferreira, who is the SGAC Regional Coordinator for Asia Pacific represented Sri Lanka in for this.

I think we can look forward for more opportunities similar to this, so that we can better showcase how Sri Lanka perceives and contributes to astronomy and space related issues, which in the long run can benefit everybody. Of course hats off to the two guys for their contribution rendered and looking forward to more input....

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