Messages from the Board

Message from 09-08-2023

Dear NPA planetarians,

On September 9th 2023, so in exactly a month, we will be gathered at the 2023 NPA conference, and there we will have our biennial membership meeting.

As stated in the online programme the agenda is as follows:

Meeting agenda:

Report from the president
Report from the secretary-treasurer
Updates to the NPA bylaws
Election of the new NPA board members
NPA 2025 conference

Here are a few things we would like to inform you about in advance of the meeting:

The position of the NPA president for the period 2023-2025 is open, and the NPA board welcomes all nominations for the post. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone you know then please send a short statement to a member of the NPA board.
If you read the NPA bylaws carefully you may discover that there is a difference between members and voting members. Voting members are those that physically show up to the NPA conference (and pay the conference fee that includes the voting member fee).
If there are any NPA members that would like to tune in and follow the NPA general meeting then please feel free to contact us for a zoom link.
Speaking of the NPA bylaws, some may remember that we discussed at the last general member meeting that there was a need for updating the bylaws to better reflect how NPA is running at the moment. On the NPA website we have published a new version of the bylaws. Please take a moment to read through the new version and then we will vote on it at the general meeting.

Best wishes,
The NPA board

Message from 23-06-2023

The Nordic Planetarium community welcomes you to join us at Tekniska museet in Stockholm on September 8-10 2023. The conference will be held English and this years conference has the theme: ASTRONOMY & SPACE EDUCATION.

Dear planetarians,

The NPA ’23 Conference is soon approaching on the heels of summer and vacations. There's an interesting program in the making, and 35 delegates have already registered. We are looking forward to welcoming you too!

Please, register as soon as possible to take advantage of the Early Bird registration, in effect until 30 June, and 1000 SEK (including programs, meals, study trips, etc.). From 1 July, the price will be 1500 SEK.

See you in Stockholm in September!

All the best,

NPA ´23 Organizing Committee

Preliminary programme: https://www.npa-planetarium.org/npa2023

More about the upcoming conference:

Once you have registered via the npa-planetarium.org website you will be (manually) contacted with further instructions on how to pay - and thereby complete your registration.
Although registration after June 30th is possible, those wanting to contribute to the programme must register before this deadline.
We are continuously updating the NPA website with useful information about accommodation, the conference location and the programme, including the excursions we are planing.

As always the NPA conference language will be English, and although we mostly cater to planetarians in the Nordic and Baltic countries, all are welcome and we encourage you to tell your friends and colleges about the upcoming NPA2023 conference. Word of moth is always powerful. Especially since e-mails such as this one may end up being stopped by spam filters.

Also worth keeping an eye on:

Woldwide celebrations in honor of the centenial of the planetarium will start in October. Read more on their website and join in. Note that the Centennial trailer has already been translated to two Nordic languages: Swedish and Icelandic!

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Thank you for being a part of NPA and we hope to see you all in Stockholm at the NPA 2023 conference.

Best wishes,

The NPA board

Message from 27-04-2023

Registration for NPA2023 is now open!

The conference will be held at Tekniska museum in Stockholm, Sweden,

on September 8-10 2023. Register now and join us there !

Dear NPA planetarians.

Preliminary programme: https://www.npa-planetarium.org/npa2023

Yes, registration for NPA2023 is now open! Please tell your friends about the NPA2023 conference. Both because there is always a risk this e-mail may end up being stopped by someones spam filter, but also because there may be planetarians out there that have not (yet) added their email to our email list.

Other upcoming events you should be aware of:

ESA and IPS are collaborating to bring you an awesome live event on May 7th at 19:30 CET focused on the JUICE mission. The event will be in English and if you sign up you and your planetarium can participate.
If you have a mobile dome then you could consider joining this worldwide online meeting on Saturday May 13th at 14:00 GMT. Note that you must be an IPS member to attend.
Worldwide celebrations in honor of the centennial of the planetarium will start in October. Read more on their website and join in.

Thank you for being a part of NPA and we hope to see you all soon in Stockholm at the NPA 2023 conference.

Best wishes,

The NPA board

Message from 30-12-2022

Dear Nordic Planetarians

We hope the holidays are treating you well and we hope that you have managed to user this time off to rest and recharge. The new year is about to start - with new adventures and opportunities. Let's make the most of it.

This past year (and the preceding 'covid years') have brought some significant challenges to members of the planetarium community, but let us hope that there are better times ahead now.

One thing to look forward to in 2023 is that this marks the start of the Centennial celebration of the Planetarium. More information can be found on the Centennial website, and of course we encourage our members to join the festivities in their own way:

https://planetarium100.org/

And as you may know, the NPA board has started planing the next NPA conference - which will be held in Stockholm from Friday to Sunday, September 8th to 10th. Make sure you mark your (brand new) calendars because we would love to see you there. More information will be posted on the NPA website in the coming months:

https://www.npa-planetarium.org/

So to summarise:

Happy holidays and we wish you a fantastic 2023 with many starry nights.

The NPA Board

Message from 09-10-2022

Dear NPA members,

I hope you’ve all had a good summer with exciting new James Webb images to enjoy and a great start of the fall term with lots of visitors to inspire.

I can tell you that the board has been hard at work since our meeting in Lübeck last fall. By moving our email-list (which has so far been manually maintained) to a dedicated tool we are now (finally) complying with EUs GDPR rules. All 175 members have been manually added, and our hope is that mailchimp will give you better control over your membership. You can now unsubscribe if you no longer consider yourself a planetarian and you can encourage those of your co-workers who are not (yet) on the list, to join via the new NPA website.

“What new NPA website?”, I hear you all asking. Well, this one of course:

https://www.npa-planetarium.org/ (still under development)

Members (and friends) of the board have been putting together this new website, and we expect it will evolve with time to include more content. If you have information that you think should be added then let us know.

We are also looking for people to join our digital communication team. If you have time to help out with the website or if you would like to contribute content on the NPA facebook page then let us know (serious contributors get administrative privileges).

Now for some exciting news: I will have to take a little time off from the presidency work this winter to add another astronaut candidate to the world (please allow for approximately 25-30 years before the little one can join ESA). During my brief time off my NPA president duties will be attended to by the rest of the board so you can be sure that my little distraction will not affect the planning of the upcoming NPA conference.

Speaking of: The next NPA conference will be hosted by Tekniska Museum in Stockholm in the fall of 2023. We will make sure to update the NPA website with news once we know more details, and we will send out an email to you all when registration opens.

Next year (2023-2025) the planetarium community will also be celebrating that it has been 100 years since the commissioning of the first star projector. This will be celebrated around the world and we would love to see some NPA members joining. There is already a dedicated website for this project:

https://planetarium100.org/ (still under development)

To learn more about how to get involved all IPS and NPA members are welcome to join the "Centennial of the planetarium mini conference" which is happening now on Friday, October 14th from 3 pm UTC to 9 pm UTC. (Link to invite)

The centennial celebrations are going to be relevant to all planetaria and there are projects being prepared that can be used in your dome/region (see this pdf document for more details).

There will be a partial solar eclipse visible over northern Europe on October 25th (see link here). Steno Museum/Aase Roland Jacobssen is organizing both talks and telescope viewings (see link here) and would love to know if there are more people/planetaria that are planning something. Perhaps NPA could set up a joint FB event page for a wider visibility? If you are interested in this please contact Aase at: aase.jacobsen@sm.au.dk

As always, we would love to hear from you, and any news and projects you have going on right now. Please consider sending a paragraph or two about any happenings to me or to Lars Petersen to be published in the Planetarian (and if you are not getting the Planetarian sent to you already then perhaps it is time to renew your IPS membership).

For those who like to use Slack to network, we still have the slack channel. It may not be very active right now and we are considering if another form of communication would be better, but until we move to some other system you are welcome to say hi to us there. If you are not yet a part of the NPA Slack community then you are welcome to join via this link:

https://join.slack.com/t/nordicplanetarians/shared_invite/zt-1h1kbvkqv-BhWu0ST~6uoKl97BO2DnPw

Stay in touch

Karen M. Torsteinbø, President of NPA

(with input from Anna S. Arnadottir, the unofficial secretary of the NPA board)