Thursday, February 25, 2010

#088 Indonesia...Thanks Imam!



This fantastic FDC was issued in June,2009 celebrating the inauguration of Suramadu Bridge.

The Suramadu Bridge is a bridge with three cable-stayed sections constructed between Surabaya on the island of Java and the town of Bangkalan on the island of Madura in Indonesia. The 5.4-km bridge is the longest in Indonesia and the first bridge to cross the Madura Strait.

The bridge was built by a consortium including China Road and Bridge Corp. and China Harbor Engineering Co. Ltd.

On the back is Indonesia International Year of Astronomy 2009 miniature sheet.

The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) was a year-long celebration of astronomy, which took place in 2009 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo Galilei and the publication of Johannes Kepler's Astronomia nova in the 17th century.

In 1609, Galileo Galilei first turned one of his telescopes to the night sky and made astounding discoveries that changed mankind’s conception of the world forever: mountains and craters on the Moon, a plethora of stars invisible to the naked eye, and moons around Jupiter.Astronomical observatories around the world promised to reveal how planets and stars are formed, how galaxies assemble and evolve, and what the structure and shape of our Universe actually are. In the same year, Johannes Kepler published his work Astronomia nova—in which he described the fundamental laws of planetary motions.

On 25th September 1608, Hans Lippershey, a young man from Middleburg, travelled to the Hague, the then capital of the Netherlands, to demonstrate one of his inventions to the Dutch government - the telescope. Although Hans was not awarded the patent, Galileo heard of this story and decided to use the "Dutch perspective glass" and point it towards the heavens.

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