Winter Solstice Sunrise to be Webcast from Ireland to Kick-Off International Year of Astronomy

The Irish node of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 is offering to share with IYA2009 Worldwide a live webcast from the neolithic passage tomb of Newgrange, in County Meath, Ireland, of the winter solstice sunrise on December 21st. This event is organised and sponsored (for IYA2009), by the Office of Public Works in Ireland. This will be the first of many IYA2009 events. See http://www.newgrange.com/ and http://astronomy2009.ie/

The webcast will be live from 08.30 to 09.30 UTC on December 21st. The actual sunrise is ~08.55 UTC. Each person around the World who wishes to take the webcast will have to link to a specified URL (via a clickable link on your website, say) and then the video will be streamed to them directly at 150 Kbps or 300 Kbps. The company can cope with a very large number of simultaneous feeds. There will be clickable links set up on http://www.astronomy2009.ie/ and http://www.astronomy2009.org/ according to Professor Michael Redfern, School of Physics, National University of Ireland.