Uwingu Announces Grant to Support International Dark Sky Association Education Efforts

BOULDER, Colo. - May 30, 2013 - PRLog -- Uwingu™ announced today that it has awarded a grant to the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) for the support of educational outreach efforts at IDA. This grant was funded by proceeds from Uwingu’s exoplanet naming efforts at www.uwingu.com.

“Uwingu’s goals are to fund space research and education projects, and to help the public better connect to the sky and space!” said Uwingu CEO, Dr. Alan Stern. “This grant to the International Dark-Sky Association fulfills all those objectives, and we’re excited to provide IDA with our support.”

The mission of the International Dark-Sky Association is to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting.

The IDA’s executive director Bob Parks added “We’re excited to have Uwingu's support for our new Save Our Stars (SOS) campaign.  The SOS will engage amateur astronomers across the globe in an exciting outreach program that promotes the wonder of the night sky and encourages people to protect it."

Uwingu is conducting the world’s first Adopt-a-Planet campaign, which allows members of the public to nominate names for planets around far away stars. Any nominated name that reaches 1,000 votes will qualify its namer to adopt the far away planet of their choice with that name from official databases created by astronomers. Funds collected from planet name nominations and voting help fuel The Uwingu Fund for space research and education grants.

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About Uwingu: Uwingu (which means “sky” in Swahili, and is pronounced “oo-wing-oo”) is led by a team of leading astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives, and educators. The company and it’s advisory board includes space historian and author Andrew Chaikin; space educator Dr. Emily CoBabe-Ammann; author and former museum science director Dr. David Grinspoon; planet hunter Dr. Geoff Marcy; planetary scientist and aerospace executive Dr. Teresa Segura; planetary scientist and former NASA science chief Dr. Alan Stern; planetary scientist and CEO of the Planetary Science Institute Dr. Mark Sykes; former Executive Director of the Planetary Society Dr. Louis Friedman; and space artists Jon Lomberg and Dr. Dan Durda. In September, Uwingu successfully concluded one of the 25 largest Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns ever to launch an ongoing series of public engagement projects. Visit Uwingu’s web site at www.uwingu.com to learn more.

For more information, contact Dr. Alan Stern at stern@uwingu.com, or at 970-281-SKY1. Follow Uwingu on Twitter @UwinguSky; and friend Uwingu on Facebook.