The journey of langitselatan
Observing the Sun at an Iangitselatan event .
COURTESY OF Fikry Maulana / langitselatan
Indonesia website builds astronomy awareness one click at a time
By AVIVAH YAMANI
Guest Contributor
Astronomy is interesting and the beauty of the sky always makes people wonder . Is there life on another planet ? What is it like if there is one ? How can we travel to another planet ? This dream made people look up to the sky and observe from thousands of years ago . But it wasn ’ t only about a curiosity on life elsewhere . Ancient people use the stars for navigation and agriculture . This dream takes us from naked eye observation to building space-based telescopes and sending spacecraft to learn about other planets and discover planets around other stars . All these achievements as well as the images taken by telescopes in
26 different kinds of light without doubt amazed people . This also increased curiosity which made the public look for easy-to-understand information about the universe . And this is where we take part . As a science communicator or astronomy communicator to be exact . This is the work we ’ ve been doing for more than a decade . This is a story of a website named langitselatan from Indonesia , a tropical country and the world ’ s largest island country . The country has more than seventeen thousand islands with 922 of those permanently inhabited . Astronomy in Indonesia has started since ancient times for navigation , agriculture , and fishing season . The stories of celestial objects can often be found in folklore which tell us how the celestial objects influenced people ’ s life and faith in ancient times . In Indonesia , we still observe the sun and moon for religious practice such as crescent moon after new moon to determine the beginning and end of the fasting month . Without doubt , public curiosity is high . Astronomy events such as eclipse , meteor shower , or crescent moon observations to determine the fasting month become top search in search engines . In recent days , all this information can easily be found on the internet either in new outlets or in social media . Not only that , but we can also talk with the astronomers through their social media . Social networks provide us a way to talk and discuss