What a year.
It would be useless to repeat the same cliches about how special, strange and sad 2020 has been. We are all happy that it's ending, and not just the calendar year. We have things on the horizon to be hopeful about and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
As the pandemic is expected to be tamed in 2021, it's time to refocus our attention to another major threat: climate change. Despite all the home office, lack of traveling, and lower consumption, our planet has continued to warm, wildfires raged, icebergs melted and we lost another year to gross inaction. As every year, in 2020 we have offset our carbon footprint for the whole year including all deliveries and other emissions with the help of our partner Cool Earth. We encourage you to donate to them and get involved in 2021.
What else happened to us in 2020?
- In January we made the cutest video ad with dogs!
- In the same month we got featured in a video by Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson himself!
- In March we started a campaign to save the night sky from pollution satellites getting serious media coverage.
- At the end of the same month we published an article that demonstrated the effects of COVID-19 on the city of Milan as visible from space, using satellite imagery.
- In May we launched an awareness campaign that used computer graphics to show how the sky in 27 major cities could look if we got rid of light pollution. The site was featued in 60 different publications including Sky News, Forbes and Yahoo and won several design awards.
- In September we published our guide for the best U.S. national parks for stargazing. It was featured in Lonely Planet and USA Today among others.
- In November we shared the heartwarming story of Katie who used our star maps to help fire fighters cope with the loss of their colleagues.
- In December we collected our favorite COVID-related star maps our customers ordered.
...and of course, throughout the entire year, we kept making people smile and weep tears of joy, one star map at a time.
We wish you an amazing 2021!
(Under Lucky Stars funded several COVID-19 charitable projects this year but we do not think it's elegant to use those for PR.)