International Astronomy Olympiad

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The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) is an internationally recognized annual astronomy competition for high school students. It is one of the international science olympiads.

The students are selected from their home countries' national olympiad. The International Olympiad consists of three exams: an observational, a theoretical and a practical. The observational round involve recognizing stars, constellations, estimating star magnitude and angular distance. The practical round consists of questions based on data results of observations. The theoretical round consists of questions involving hypothetical situations.

Most of the participant states came from Eastern Europe and Asia. The only American country ever to participate is Brazil. Between the traditional participants are Russia, China, India, Sweden, Serbia Montenegro*, Estonia, Lithuania, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Iran, Romania, Bulgaria. Moscow Land send a team apart from Russia and in the X IAO, Beijing sent a team apart from China. Crimea had sent teams apart from Ukraine. Ukraine, Belarus, Italy and Armenia have already sent teams.

Montenegro will probably not participate in the next olympiads.

[edit] List of olympiads

Year	Country	City or village	Number of participating teams
1996, November 1-8	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	2
1997, October 21-28	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	4
1998, October 20-27	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	5
1999, September 25 - October,2	Ukraine	Nauchnyj	7
2000, October 20-27	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	8
2001, September 26 - October 3	Ukraine	Nauchnyj	9
2002, October 22-29	Russia	Nizhnij Arkhyz	12
2003, October 2-8	Sweden	Stockholm	14
2004, October 1-9	Ukraine	Simeiz	18
2005, October 25 - November 2	China	Beijing, Huairou	15
2006, November, 10-19	India	Bombay	unknown