As most of you probably know, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Special events have been taking place all over the world. In my opinion, one of the most interesting events was the Amateur Telescope Making Workshop that took place over a six day period this month in Kilyos, a northern suburb of Istanbul, Turkey. The event was organized by the Istanbul Culture University. About 100 people took part in this event. 80% of the participants were specially chosen mathematics or physics teachers, 15% were astronomy students and 5% were amateur astronomers.

Those of us who weren’t lucky enough to be in Turkey for this event can still enjoy a great video created by Nurcan Ortugen Gok (Gok means sky, by the way) and Tugrul Tezcan. Be sure to check out this video – it is really well done and it’s a lot of fun! Congratulations Nurcan and Tugrul – you two did a great job!

In case you’re wondering, most of the telescopes created during this event will be used by the teachers in school astronomy clubs.