Hey, E.lunaseer—Wanted to say thank you for that festive Nightsky Image in the grinch thread!
You have no idea how stargazing calms me. There is something pure about stargazing; informative discussions and images always soften my heart. Stargazing is my positive trigger word/tool.
This season my heart is softened by the folks over at Astronomers Without Borders. This is what the AWB folks accomplished!
We now have enough to build The Center for Science Education and Observatory and will become a reality in 2015. It will become a Tanzanian hub that will have a long-lasting impact nationwide by training teachers, offering hands-on laboratories (including an astronomical observatory), and providing quality educational resources.
There is a video with some smiling youths looking engaged. Maybe they will view the Christmas Tree Cluster in the future. Maybe they will study and view Leo T, one surviving Hobbit Galaxy. (Seven Hobbit Galaxies are not alive.) Maybe they will be interested in the Holometer at Fermilab and if the universe is 2D, as an ExtremeTech article discusses. Surely they will learn about the discovery of other universes from MIT news.
http://news.sciencemag.org/2007/01/hobbits-space
This is why stargazing is my tool. Comforted by the fact that many can value stargazing, I feel I am investing my time in something down right awesome and am, even at a distance, in good company with like-minded folks.
I can concentrate on when I will stargaze next and that is, I am learning, my positive reinforcement.