"100 square moons" of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is an educational exhibition originated within the framework of the project "NIÉPCE: from the negative to the positive" which celebrated 200 years since the first photographic images. With this project, Astronomy pays homage to Photography for its major role in enhancing and preserving the data acquired using telescopes.
"100 square moons" comprises nine panels with astronomical images, each of 1m x 1m, accompanied by their corresponding explanatory panels, of 1m x 0.3m. The images were obtained with the Sky Treasure Chest (STC), an astrograph belonging to the Science Communication and Culture Unit (UC3) of the IAC, installed in the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands).
It is an exhibition with didactic and informative aims, and a dozen copies have been made for circulating through the educational centres of the Canary Islands during the next school years. The dimensions of the photographs displayed are on each side ten times the apparent diameter of the Moon, which is used as a unit of measurement. This covers an area of 100 square moons, hence the name of the exhibition.
The themes of the images cover practically all types of astronomical objects and some relevant discoveries in Astrophysics, which are presented under the following titles: Exo-Planetary Systems, Stellar Nurseries, Adolescent Stars, Cosmic Fossils, Fleeting Tombstones, Stellar Remnants, Island Universes, Groups of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies.