The State of Qatar won the 2nd place in the Global e-Competition on Astronomy and Astrophysics (GeCAA) 2020, which was organized with the participation of around 300 students representing 40 different nationalities from all over the world. The GeCAA was held in lieu of the 14th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), which was supposed to take place in Colombia but cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Friday, October 23rd, the IOAA management announced the full results of the competition via a live Zoom broadcast. Team Sextans, which included student Abdulrahman Khaldoun Tasabehji from Qatar's Ali bin Jassim Secondary School for Boys, managed to secure the GeCAA's 2nd place ahead of over 40 international teams. The team was supervised by astronomer Hani Al Dalee, coach of  Qatar's team in the IOAA and representative of Qatar to the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach.

Team Sextans included students from seven countries: Qatar, China, India, Colombia, Croatia, Ukraine and Hungary.

The participating teams have been assigned to implement two projects; one is related to the ability of a space telescope to bring celestial bodies into view, while the other is to measure the distance between the Moon and the Earth using the parallax method.

This is the same method used for determining the distance between the stars and the Sun. As part of this project, the team was required to take shots of the moon between the stars from two different countries simultaneously, and then calculate the angle difference between them.

All public school students, who represented Qatar in the GeCAA, have put in a great deal of effort in accomplishing the tasks assigned to them under the supervision of a number of teachers and coaches. A list of the participating students, teachers and coaches can be viewed here.