The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) is an internationally recognized annual astronomy scientific-educating event for high school students (14–18 years old), which includes an intellectual competition between these students. It is one of the international science olympiads.

The Euro-Asian Astronomical Society founded the IAO in 1996.

The competing part of IAO consists of three rounds: a theoretical, an observational, and a practical. Problems of the theoretical round involve classical problems in branches of astronomy, astrophysics, space and planetary physics, and maybe hypothetical situations. The observational round involves recognizing stars, constellations, estimating star magnitude and angular distance, working with telescopes or other observational technique. The practical round consists of problems based on data results of observations, solutions propose analysis of these data.

The style of the problems of IAO is aimed at developing the imagination, creativity and independent thinking. They stimulate the students to recognize the problem independently, to choose a model, to make necessary suppositions, estimations, to conduct multiway calculations or logic operations. The rounds are not tests of speed or memory or knowledge of formal facts and data, and all basic data and formal facts are provided to the students. The ways of solutions are of the first priority in evaluations of the participants' solutions, while the correct formal final answer (formula or numerical value) does not play the determining role in the evaluation. Participants should have a possibility to exhibit the analytical capacities, and not just to do all procedures by hard rules. Also the jury board does not demand from participants to follow the way of solution that is written by the author or composer of the problem.

The International Astronomy Olympiad is carried out in the spirit of friendship and tolerance, where the competition is a stimulus for showing the participants' capabilities but contacts, exchange of ideas and collaboration between students, teachers and scientists from various countries have a primary importance. The competition at the IAO is not the only part of the programme.

The students for IAO are selected during National Olympiads and Camps of the participating states.

Traditionally the teams of Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Moscow Land, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Serbia, and Thailand take part in the IAO. Crimea, Ukraine and Belarus take part not regularly. Croatia, Czech Republic and Kazakhstan joined the competition at last years. A few countries plan to join IAO in the nearest future.

Moscow Land and Crimea send teams apart from Russia and Ukraine. As organizers of the oldest open astronomical olympiads and competitions (since 1940s), and due to their historical service in the formation and development of IAO they are considered at IAO as independent states with all rights and duties.

[edit] List of olympiads

Year	Country	City or village	Number of participating teams	Number of countries sent observers
1996, November 1-8	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	4	1
1997, October 21-28	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	4
1998, October 20-27	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	5	1
1999, September 25 - October,2	Ukraine	Nauchnyj	7	2
2000, October 20-27	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	8
2001, September 26 - October 3	Ukraine	Nauchnyj	7	2
2002, October 22-29	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	11
2003, October 2-8	Sweden	Stockholm	13	2
2004, October 1-9	Ukraine	Simeiz	18
2005, October 25 - November 2	China	Beijing, Huairou	15	2
2006, November, 10-19	India	Bombay	16	3
2007, September 29 - October 7	Ukraine	Simeiz	23	1
2008, October 13-21	Italy	Trieste	19	1
2009, November 8-16	China	Hangzhou	17	1

[edit] See also

School Astronomical Olympiad by Correspondence

[edit] External links

• Official site of International Astronomy Olympiad

This school-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

This astronomy-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e