The time has come for all you “Generation Zers” to share your favorite thing about the cosmos with Astronomy magazine’s 2012 Youth Essay Contest. The winner will receive two round-trip airline tickets and hotel accommodations for up to three nights for the Northeast Astronomy Forum & Telescope Show (NEAF) in Suffern, New York — one of the world’s premier astronomy expos.
Astronomy already has sent two fantastic individuals to NEAF, where each has had amazing experiences. In 2010, 11-year-old Adam Atanas had the opportunity to meet one of his favorite professional astronomers, Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley, who was the keynote speaker at NEAF that year. In 2011, 16-year-old Benjamin Palmer was able to spend time with some of the most influential names in the hobby and is now an important member of the Astronomy Foundation.
And NEAF 2012 should be just as great as it was for these two youth. The show features an A-list of exciting speakers, more than 100 vendors, and hundreds of telescopes and accessories on display. It also offers lots of exciting activities for kids, including daily solar observing, STARLAB planetarium shows, and a meteorite display.
Be sure to check out the full contest details and enter today! And read about Adam’s and Benjamin’s essays to inspire you for this year’s contest.