Tomorrow is Yuri’s Night – an open, worldwide celebration of humanity’s first spaceflight on April 12th, 1961 and also the first flight of the Space Shuttle exactly twenty years later. It’s not only about Yuri Gagarin’s flight, but simply the fact that this was the beginning of a completely new era of space exploration. Yuri’s Night is not about politics or the space race, but simply to raise more public interest about space exploration – the event has now been held since 2001 and has already become something of a tradition around the world.

It is not a formal celebration – the organizers of Yuri’s Night leave it up to everbody to make up their own event. Throw a star party, just meet somwhere, screen a movie or hold an online event – everybody can celebrate in their own way, the organizers would just appreciate if you would let them know what’s going on so they can list the event on their website. In 2013 more than 300 events in 47 countries have been reported, but unfortunately not many in Germany. While I’m not exactly planning to do a party myself, it seems to be a good occasion to collect some interesting links for all things space.

The first link is to my own article about Science & Astronomy Hangouts, which is still up to date and has mostly links to the online events of CosmoQuest, which I really don’t need to introduce further. The guest of the Learning Space Hangout from April 4th was Tim Bailey, one of the organizers of Yuri’s Night and in yesterday’s Learning Space Mike Simmons from Astronomers without Borders was talking about Global Astronomy Month – which is also this April and ties in perfectly with Yuri’s Night. Unfortunately the weather here in Germany has been terrible for Astronomy in April so far, but there is always the Virtual Star Party, the SLOOH Space Camera and the Virtual Telescope Project. Tomorrow night at 9pm CET there will be the Weekly Space Hangout from Universe Today, CosmoQuest & Co, which is probably also going to be a Yuri’s Night Edition.

So there’s much to look at and participate in even if you don’t have the time to organise or go to a party yourself. I’m not doing anything particular this year, but I think I’m going to share out at least one of my circles on my Google+ Stream tomorrow to provide even more connections. There’s also my collection of space movie reviews over at DVDLog, but these are all still in German – but I’m sure I’ll have them all translated to English for Yuri’s Night 2014!