I can’t believe another year has come and gone, but tomorrow is Yuri’s Night again – an open, worldwide celebration of humanity’s first spaceflight on April 12th, 1961, which was also the first flight of the Space Shuttle twenty years later. It’s not about Soviet spaceflight or Yuri Gagarin specifically, but actually the fact that this was the beginning of human space exploration itself. It’s not about politics at all, which is especially important this year due to the tensions around the Ukraine and Crimea, but only a way to raise more public interest about space exploration. This is why Yuri’s Night has also been called the World Space Party, a celebration that humankind has ventured off its home planet for the first time.

This year, the number of events on the Yuri’s Night website has sadly gone down from over 300 of 2013 to barely 200, so the interest seems to be waning, but there are still a lot of Space Parties listed, even here in Germany – but unfortunately not anywhere near me. But the organizers  leave it up to everbody to make up their own event – throw a star party, just meet somewhere, screen a movie or hold an online event! Everybody can celebrate in their own way, but the organizers would just appreciate if you would let them know what’s going on so they can list it on their website.

I’m not throwing much of a party this year again, because there will be unfortunately no stargazing opportunities at all due to the lousy weather, but I will be watching out for some special online events. Tonight at 9pm CEST there will, of course, be the Weekly Space Hangout and Scott Lewis and Tony Darnell are also planning something with the live edition of Space Fan News starting at 3am CEST (bit late for me, though!). April is also Global Astronomy Month and Nicole Gugliucci and Georgia Bracey had Mike Simmons of Astronomy without Borders on their Learning Space hangout series recently. And, of course, you can always watch the Virtual Star Party live or recorded if your skies are not cooperative or if you don’t have a telescope.

And there will is also something over on DVDLog too with a little collection of space-themed reviews, which I fortunately now at least have partially translated to English. Keep watching my stream on Google+, find out more about Science and Astronomy related podcasts in my blog post from January or add my Science, Space & Astronomy or Astrophotographer Google+ circles which I had shared on December 31st, but which are still up-to-date. And keep watching the skies… if you don’t have clouds overhead, that is!