CAIRO: The heavens must have been smiling down upon Egyptian astronomy enthusiasts this week with a former NASA astronaut and a distinguished astronomer delivering a series of lectures about the fascinating subject in Cairo and Alexandria. From the possibility of life outside our solar system to an enthralling real life story of a space rescue mission, the lecture attendees were in for numerous treats. The public outreach program, part of the International Year of Astronomy, kicked off in Egypt with a lecture for children at the Integrated Care Institution on Thursday, followed by a stop at the Cairo Opera House on Friday, Bibliotheca Alexandrina on Saturday, and ending with both Cairo University and the American University in Cairo on Sunday. With the slogan "The Universe, Yours to Discover, the International Astronomical Union aims to stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science. "The International Year of Astronomy is to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the universe through the day and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery, reads their vision statement. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Planetarium Science Center (PSC) hosted the lecturers as part of the Astronomy Olympiad closing event, another of the International Year of Astronomy's activities organized by the PSC. Astronomy Olympiad is a competition aiming to stimulate enthusiasm and interest in astronomy among middle school students. Both lecturing scientists boast impressive careers. Jeffrey Hoffman, a former NASA astronaut, is now a professor of astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert Williams, formerly the director of the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute and currently a distinguished research scholar of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), was recently elected president to the International Astronomical Union. Hoffman gave a lecture entitled "Astronaut Servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope: Rescue, Repair, and a Look towards the Future describing his experiences as an astronaut. Williams spoke about the way space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope have changed astronomy in a lecture titled "The New Universe: Revelations from Space Telescopes. "New discoveries from Hubble Space Telescope and from complicated computer calculations have revealed important facts about the universe that were not imagined years ago, Williams stressed. Enormous progress in astronomy's recent history, he continued, has led to parallel progress in different areas of research. For example, a field like cosmology have benefited from the precise measurements of the rate of the accelerating expansion of the universe, made possible by space telescopes. Galaxy formation studies, as well, have harnessed the power of these deep probing telescopes, which enable scientists and researchers to see younger galaxies in their early formation stages, to better understand how a galaxy evolves. Williams tickled the audience's imagination when he described the very recent observations of planets outside our solar system, or the "exo-planets. The presence of planets in solar systems around other stars that might support life was long before known, but it was only recently that astronomers were able to observe, study, and catalog these other "worlds. On the other hand, Williams emphasized that whilst astronomical discoveries change our understanding of distant and exotic objects, they just as profoundly impact our understanding of ourselves on earth. What the kids at the Integrated Care Institute found as fascinating as exo-planets, if not more so, was Hoffman's story about the space trip he made in December 1993 for the rescue and repair of the initially flawed Hubble Space Telescope. "I was fortunate to have been selected as a NASA astronaut in 1978, when NASA was preparing to start flying the Space Shuttle, Hoffman said. He discussed the intensive astronaut training he undertook to complete five space flights and having the honor of being the first astronaut to accumulate 1,000 hours of space flight onboard the Shuttle. In his historic fourth mission with a record of five space walks by four astronauts, Hoffman's team serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and restored it to full capacity.
