Information about Global e-Competition on Astronomy and Astrophysics. This year the IAAO will be held online because of the global pandemic. All the best if you are applying!

1. Global e-Competition
on Astronomy and
Astrophysics

2. The IOAA International Board is organizing Global e-
Competition on Astronomy and Astrophysics (GeCAA) as an
alternate educational event for the benefit of students who
were due to participate in IOAA this year.
The event will be held
in 2 categories,
individual and group.

3. Individual
Individual category will have one
test based on theoretical problems,
one on the data analysis problems,
one on observation related
problems. The rounds for this
category will be held on September
25, 26 and 27, 2020.
01
Group
In group category, the participants will
be grouped in mixed
international teams by the organizers
and will be given a set of tasks to
solve in a collaborative way. The teams
will receive the tasks on September 28,
2020 and will have to submit their
solutions by October 12, 2020.
02
Categories

4. Important Dates
August
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sat
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
➢ 05.08 - opening of registration
➢ 31.08 - closing of registration
➢ 25.09 - start of individual competition
➢ 27.09 - end of individual competition
➢ 28.09 - start of team competition
➢ 14.10 - end of team competition
➢ 23.10 - results, end of competition podcast

5. The official webpage of the competition is:
www.gecaa.ee
Registration
SEO Optimized
Competition website
The competition registration link
is now open and can be found in:
https://gecaa.ee/registration/
Contacts
For practical organizational question contact
Kelli Hanschmidt: kelli.hanschmidt@ut.ee
For scientific questions contact
Tiit Sepp: tiit.sepp.34@gmail.com

6. Academic committee of the 1st GeCAA
The academic committee of the 1st GeCAA consists of the following members.
1. Greg Stachowski – IOAA President
2. Aniket Sule – IOAA General Secretary
3. Tiit Sepp (Estonia)
4. Hara Papathanassiou (Greece)
5. Gustavo Rojas (Portugal)
6. Mikhail Kuznetsov (Russia)
7. Sonja Vidojevic (Serbia)
8. Geraldine Tan (Singapore)
9. Siramas Komonjinda (Thailand)
10. Volodymyr Reshetnyk (Ukraine)
11. Charles Barclay (UK)
12. Ioana Zelko (USA)
The academic committee is responsible for the problems in theory, data and
team competition rounds of the competition.

7. ● Length of the round is 3h
● Graph paper accessibility is
not required
● Ability to draw rough graphs
and understand plots is
necessary
Theoretical
round
Teams will be made semi randomly (meaning that students are drawn to
teams using a randomized algorithm but are distributed so that team
members’ locations would have maximal spread across the globe ).
Observational
round
● Length of the round is 2h
● Problems might include virtual
sky charts, recognition of
objects/effects based on images
and videos.
○ Thus having a mouse or other
accurate means (better than just
laptop touchpad)
to point objects on screen is
advisable.
Data analysis
round
Team competition
● Length of the round 3h
● During the selection of the
problems the standard distribution
of shorter and longer
problems, that is common in IOAA is
followed as much as possible
● Problems are expected be slightly
shorter than traditional IOAA
problems
● Some basic knowledge of calculus
might be beneficial for solving some
problems. More
details will be provided at the first
possible moment.

8. USAAAO is delighted to be able to register all 10 students that were originally
supposed to represent USA at the International Astronomy and Astrophysics
Olympiad. Students have been part of the online training since mid May.

9. Team mentors responsible for coordinating,
supervising and grading are: (Left to Right)
Thaddeus Komacek, Sandesh Kalantre,
Katarine Emanuela Klitzke, and Lucas Pinheiro.
10
Students
4
Team Leaders

10. Next year, if the situation improves, IOAA will
be in Colombia in September.
This presentation is made by
Publicity Officer Rashmi Sheoran :D