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Second Istanbul By Gamze Menali As some of you may remember, David Levy, Wendee Levy, and I attended the First Istanbul Amateur Astronomy Symposium that was organized in Istanbul, Turkey (June 25-26 2005), and dedicated to our beloved Janet. This year, the same university (Istanbul Kultur University) that organized the first symposium held the second amateur astronomy symposium again in Istanbul. Arne and I attended as invited speakers, and Linda, Arne, Dick Parker from Connecticut, and my dear husband Haldun were the guests of honor also! It was fun! This year, as part of the whole event, there was a telescope mirror making workshop also (a first in the country's history, so it was a huge deal for the participants and for the university also). Haldun and Dick Parker, an amateur astronomer from Connecticut, were the instructors of the workshop and need I say that it was a great success? There was so much interest that 150 people applied for a workshop that was limited to 25 per our instructors' request. They held a mini observing session at the end of the 5-day workshop. Pictures from the event may be seen here The symposium followed the workshop (July 15-17). In this article, I'd like to share my impressions of the symposium with you. Since I always want to take you all with me whenever I go to places and since that is virtually impossible, I can at least bring some memories back to you through an article. Let's get going... I was the session chair for the opening session and interestingly my talk was under my chairmanship! So I got to be my own boss and got to watch my own time, etc. It was as liberating as it was interesting. I chose my talk to be rather simple and fun to attract as many people as possible since there were spouses, kids, etc. attending the session. I talked about the "Golden Rules" pertaining to star parties: use a red light, don't leave trash behind you, make sure to benefit from all the telescopes, ask first before touching any telescope, don't miss the rising of Milky Way, etc. Mostly common sense, however, since they have only one major star party going over there, the concept was kind of new to them and I heard afterwards that my talk was much appreciated, so it was right on the spot and I was pleased to have heard that.
Arne's talk was well received also. Arne had the brilliant idea of having me translate his slides into Turkish, so that the Turkish would be in the background for people to read while he was giving his talk in English rather than translating back and forth. It worked out beautifully. The role of amateur participation in modern science/astronomy was a great topic to capture the attention of the specific crowd that was there. Prof. Dursun Kocer (the organizer) and I went to the airport to meet Arne and Linda and took them to the university to show them the workshop room, etc. Then we took them to their hotel to give them a little break. At the end of Arne and Linda's arrival day, there was a dinner on the roof of the university's building where we could mix and mingle, meet and greet. At the end of the first day of the symposium, there was a cocktail party. Although we had planned to go out for kebabs for dinner... what they called a cocktail party was almost a decent dinner, so we were full by the end of it! Instead we opted for Starbucks! YES... There is Starbucks in Istanbul, but for whatever reason the coffee never tasted the same to me. However, I decided not to act so spoiled and be grateful for what I had. It actually wasn't too bad. Better than nothing at all! The iced coffee as we know it is "Coffee Americano" over there! So if you are in the mood for iced coffee, ask for "Coffee Americano", otherwise you will get something that is kind of similar to iced latte that just wouldn't taste the same as iced black coffee!
To give you a rough idea of the paper topics.. There were some that were written for professional astronomers, some very specific, some quite informative (perhaps more than it was necessary), a few laid back and funny, all informative and a very diverse selection of articles. Various amateur astronomy clubs, some new, some established, some from the universities' student clubs, talked about their clubs and activities. There were papers about amateur telescope making, amateur rocket making, serious cosmology, radio astronomy, spectroscopy, CCD, visual observing. One of our members, Yenal Ogmen, gave an excellent paper about how to make variable star observations and how to submit them to AAVSO. There was one paper about solar observing and SIDs, and it was clear to us from that paper that the author had received a lot of guidance, help, and support from the AAVSO's late Cap Hossfield. There was a paper about the Space Camp in Turkey. I was very surprised and pleased to have realized that there was one there. There apparently are only four international space camps and one of them is in Izmir (Smyrna), Turkey. So it was great to get an update about what is going on there. They do a great job indeed. Two years ago it was only my paper that talked about AAVSO and its wonderful guidance and influence. This year there were four papers that directly talked about AAVSO and many more that mentioned us and gave us credit. I thought that was pretty good. Slowly but surely we are spreading the AAVSO fever!
At the end of the second day, there was the boat ride down the Bosphorus heading towards the Black Sea. Arne, Linda, and Dick got on the boat in Europe (literally the continent) and they stepped on the Asian side (literally the continent). The boat ride was as magical and peaceful at times as it was crazy! The magic part was related to the sights (the centuries-old forts and structures, huge Russian ships carrying cargo down the strait, the wonderful villas by the water, the wealth of the culture, the modern face, the old and the new - all at the same time), and the crazy part was the loud and I mean loud music! Everybody was dancing and it was great from the beginning, however, try to imagine screaming-loud music for the duration of the trip! We were pretty good at filtering it out and concentrating on the good, though. We were admiring the ever-changing colors on the Bosphorus Bridge and trying to guess what color was going to come next, etc. Overall, I thought it was a good ride. However I couldn't help but wonder if I was still going to have my job by the time we returned home to Boston after putting Arne through that! If you guys are reading this article now, that means that I am still around...so far so good.
On the third day, the day Arne and Linda were scheduled to leave, we went to the conference center for the morning session but we were very casually dressed. Naturally Arne and Linda were in their travel outfits, shorts and T-shirts, and I was in my jeans (as opposed to very dressy outfits that I had on during the previous two days) and my hair was all over the place since I was having a terrible hair day. Guess what?? The president of the university, Prof. Tamer Kocel, walked in to invite us to the stage to give us some beautiful plaques in recognition of our attendance at their symposium!! As you will see from the pictures, we looked like tourists passing by, but oh well... With no notice, I guess we were in pretty decent shape, if you ask me. The president thanked us all for our efforts and for being there to make the symposium even more special, and we thanked him for his generosity and for his hospitality.
On that day, Prof. Dr. Kocer and I took Arne and Linda to the airport, and they set sail to new frontiers in their journey of discovering Turkey. Speaking of the president, I want to talk a bit about him. In Turkey, science and science projects don't attract much financial support from the government, and the private schools and universities usually pour money into other things like arts and literature, etc. Istanbul Kultur University (http://www.iku.edu.tr/) is one of the few of its kind, if not the only one so far, that has been incredibly supportive of science-related activities, astronomy in particular. Prof. Kocel is not only the person who puts his signature under every check but he gets personally involved with the activities. Regardless of his busy schedule, he made time to come down to attend to paper sessions, to visit the ATM workshop, to chat with the attendees, and he even treated the attendees to a yummy triple chocolate cake one day. To this day, I pull my hair and yell at myself for missing that wonderful opportunity! That day happened to be the one day I wasn't there and of course this was going to happen...a la Gamze style! But I am forever grateful to Prof. Dr. Tamer Kocel for his generosity and for his guidance and his support. Always. Also, my deepest appreciation goes to Fahamettin Akinguc, the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Kultur University, for his leadership and his never-ending support of science, astronomy in particular, to Prof. Dr. Dursun Kocer for his immense contributions to the world of science and for being hands-on with every activity throughout, and to Aysegul F. Teker and Korhan Yelkenci for a superb job well done. Once again, if it weren't for their involvement and support, I sure wouldn't have had these wonderful memories to share with you. Arne and Linda made this trip super special for me. When I saw them coming through that door at the airport in Istanbul, something that I've known all along had just been proved once again: that my heart is equally divided into two and in one lives the Turkish part while in the other right next to it resides my American half. It is hard to explain with words, however, when I saw Arne and Linda there at the airport, I knew some place deep in my heart was truly smiling. Talk about missing people! I was grateful that Arne took the time with his crazy schedule I know so well to attend to the symposium. It meant the world to people and the students over there to have someone they look up to visiting them. I, as always, will wish that I will be able to take you all with me but since that won't be happening, I look forward to sharing many more memories with you in the years to come. Until then, stay healthy and happy.
Meeting notes from Arne Henden
When we arrived on Saturday, the last day of the mirror-making workshop, we went immediately to the University to see the progress made by the participants. It was really fun to see so many mirrors nearly finished and a long line of people waiting to test their mirrors after polishing. Dick continued working with the workshop folks all through the scientific paper sessions, with about half of the mirrors deemed "good enough" by the end - a very good record. Haldun was a whirlwind of activity, a driving force for both the mirror-making workshop and the scientific paper session. The scientific papers were good, with lots of ideas and a broad range of projects. As Gamze mentioned, they ranged from model rocketry to light pollution mitigation to theoretical modelling. The sessions were well attended, with plans to get even more people attending the next Symposium. While most papers were given in Turkish, PowerPoint slides tend to be universal and easy to understand. Most of the students were shy to speak in English at informal settings later, but once drawn out of their shells, obviously knew far more English than I did Turkish! Turkey is a country that is just starting to become active in amateur astronomy. There are clubs throughout the country, but few telescopes or CCD cameras. All commercial equipment is expensive on the typical limited income of Turkey's residents. The 8-inch mirrors created in the workshop will form the basis for many visual observing programs throughout the country. Probably the biggest impediment for amateur astronomy in Turkey is light pollution. Most of the people live in large urban areas like Istanbul, where you can barely make out the brightest stars. However, internet is everywhere, computers are available, and the amateurs I met were uniformly enthusiastic, interested in variable stars, and willing to work to become better observers. As a mediterranean country, Turkey has lots of clear weather and a good geographic location - we can use more of their observers in our programs. If you get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. Not only are the people friendly, but the countryside is unique and the long history means there are archeological sites present from almost every civilization. A special thank you to Haldun Menali for providing all of the pictures for this article. |
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