Three Million Views and Counting


2009 September 24: While TWAN exhibitions, presentations, and workshops display a selection of The world at Night to people around the world and transfer its messages, there are more viewers to the project’s expanding website. Launched in the Christmas night of 24 December 2007, TWAN website now displays about 1600 photos by the project 30 team members and by photographers who submit images to the Guest Gallery. There are new stunning images and updates each 2-3 weeks.

In the beginning of autumn 2009, three months before the end of the International Year of Astronomy, TWAN website statistics shows record of 3 million views based on visit of approximately one million unique visitors; a result similar to the recorded unique visitors for the official website of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. As the project continues to expand in new phases after the year of astronomy it is expected to gain even more daily views.

Even surprising to the project’s optimistic coordinators, the views came from 197 countries and territories including remote areas such as Antarctica, small countries like Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean and sparsely populated locations such as Norfolk Island near New Zealand. The top 10 visiting countries in the about 2 years since the website launch are United States (with about half of total visits), Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Iran, Australia, South Korea, Spain, and France. The cities with most visits are San Francisco, Tehran, London, New York, and Seoul.

Searching through the statistic for most viewed photos on TWAN made the following result for the top 3 popular TWAN photos:
Eclipse Sequence over Africa by Fred Espenak
Galactic eye by Wally Pacholka
Solstice Moonrise above Cape Sounion by Anthony Ayiomamitis

The top viewed photos by other TWAN photographers are:
Persepolis by Oshin Zakarian
Moonset in La Palma by Bernd Proschold
Comet at Dusk by Stefan Seip
Alone in the Universe? by Serge Brunier
Playing with the Moon by Laurent Laveder
Stars and Lightning by Tunc Tezel
As bright as Moon by Yuichi Taksaka
Winter Deep Field by Dennis di Cicco
The Bands over a Sea of Clouds by Nik Szymanek
Magnificent Alaska by Dennis Mammana
Stone Age Night by Babak Tafreshi
Ancient Visitor by John Goldsmith
The Gate of China by P.K. Chen
Heaven’s Gate by LeRoy Zimmerman
Comet Bennett by David Malin (representing Akira Fujii)
Castle Ruin in Lunar light by P-M Heden
Celestial Visitor by Juan Carlos Casado
Space Shuttle and ISS by Tamas Ladanyi
Stars of Sierra Nevada by Gernot Meiser
Magical Night by Pekka Parviainen
Colorado Milky Way by Thad V’Soske (time-lapse video)
The Road to Astronomers Paradise by Stephane Guisard
Window to the Heaven by Kwon O Chul
ISS Meets the Planets by Doug Zubenel
Garden of Light by Shingo Takei
Uzbekistan Fireball by Aleksandr Yuferev

Considering mainly the newly published TWAN images, the most viewed photos in the last 30 days are:
South Dakota Starry Night by Wally Pacholka

Magnificent Sahara Milky Way by Babak Tafreshi

Hale-Bopp and the Great Pyramid by John Goldsmith

On our Cosmic Motions gallery of time-lapse videos the viewing record is in hand of Bernd Proschold for A look into solitude.

In the popular Guest Gallery of TWAN, where selected images are displayed by world-wide guest photographers, the top 3 viewed images are as follows:
Iran Desert Milky Way by Amir H. Abolfath

Greek Moonrise by John Doukoumopoulos
West Kennet Longbarrow by Pete Glastonbury

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