As we wind down our 10-year anniversary celebrations, it's time to reflect on all the wonderful opportunities 2022 brought to the Office for Astronomy Outreach. Our Director, Lina Canas, and International Outreach Officer, Suzana Filipecki Martins, now have the support of Kelly Blumenthal, the new Deputy Director for the OAO. The team also expanded to include Miho Matsumoto, who has been instrumental in deepening our understanding of the Japanese science communication community, and Matipon Tangmatitham, who came to us as a fellow from the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand.
This year, we have also enjoyed working with our Steering Committee to find a path forward that maximises our impact and reach. We continue to be deeply appreciative of our Supervising Director, Hidehiko Agata, who, through his continued advisory and generosity, has supported the Office over the last decade, contributing to the success it is today. We also enjoy the unyielding support of Makiko Aoki and others at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Without their help, the OAO would not be the same.
Through it all, our National Outreach Coordinators, all of whom are volunteers, brought incredible programmes to their communities and shared their love and excitement for astronomy. We also would like to thank all of you for participating in our initiatives and contributing to the advancement of astronomy. And finally, we want to thank our translators: the Bahrain Stargazers Astronomy Club (Arabic), Dr Chen Cao (Simplified Chinese), the Haitian Translation Group of Astronomy (French), Martin Pawley and Xabier Pérez Couto (Galician), Eleonora Piromalli (Italian), Akihiko Tomita (Japanese), Catarina Leote and João Ferreira (Portuguese), and Andrea Ahumada and Ileana Andruchow (Spanish). We are so grateful for the countless hours they have dedicated to making this Newsletter more accessible worldwide.
Thank you, everyone, for making this year the best year the OAO has ever seen. We hope you have a lovely holiday season and a happy 2023. We look forward to continuing to bring you the latest in astronomy outreach from the IAU and beyond!
May your skies be dark and quiet,
Kelly Blumenthal, on behalf of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach Team
1) Women and Girls in Astronomy
This year, we collaborated with the IAU Executive Committee Working Group Women in Astronomy to highlight the contributions of women and girls to astronomy. We held a drawing contest to draw an astronomer (the winner of which won a telescope from SSVI), launched a social media campaign, and conducted a series of interviews with an international collection of women-identifying astronomers. You can watch our playlist of interviews at this link. Around the world, we saw over 250 events from our IAU National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) and other organisers, engaging over 3,000 people in total.
2) Telescopes for All
The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO), along with our partners, Stars Shine for Everyone (Sterren Schitteren voor Iedereen, SSVI) and the University of Leiden, awarded 15 telescopes to underserved communities around the globe under the Telescopes for All project. This project seeks to broaden the horizons of children, parents, and educators alike to spark an interest in science and promote equal opportunities to access astronomy. This year, we received 104 applications from 35 countries. The selected proposals will bring telescopes to underserved communities in Puerto Rico and childhood cancer patients in Iraq; they will help tackle educational disparities in Chad, Bangladesh and Madagasgar; and they will improve access to STEAM education in Mexico and rural communities in Botswana. Each of the winning proposals expands the public’s access to and knowledge of astronomy – two of the main goals of the OAO.
3) Dark and Quiet Skies
In 2022, we coordinated with the International Day of Light, the Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference, and IAU Commission B7 on the Protection of Existing and Potential Observatory Sites to plan a month-long celebration of our dark and quiet skies. We held an art contest that asked participants to artistically communicate their relationship with the sky for the chance to win a telescope from SSVI and conducted a social media campaign that focused on awareness-building. We also held a seminar that was live-streamed from Zoom onto YouTube. This drew 310 online registrants from every continent (except Antarctica) and roughly 2,700 views to date.
4) Under One Sky
The IAU Under One Sky Call for Proposals supported projects that use cultural astronomy, astronomy outreach, and astronomy communication to recognise Indigenous knowledge and respect Indigenous learning systems with a rights-based approach to Indigenous learning. This programme is a legacy of the IAU100 celebrations and was made possible through the generous support of Leiden Observatory and the NWO Communication Award 2020. The five awardees received up to 2,000 Euros to engage in activities on and around the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (9 August 2022).
5) Meet the IAU Astronomers! In 2022, we relaunched the Meet the IAU Astronomers! programme, which connects amateur astronomers, informal educators, and teachers with IAU member astronomers for virtual or in-person events. Through these meetings, the IAU members speak with children, adults, and other members of the public on astronomical research topics, the importance of astronomy for society, and choosing astronomy as a career. The Meet the IAU Astronomers! programme aims to enable any community to meet professional astronomers and share the wonders of the universe regardless of where they are in the world.
6) IAU General Assembly XXXI
During the 2022 IAU General Assembly in Busan, South Korea, the OAO participated in and led a number of events to engage our colleagues in the communication of astronomy. For example, we spearheaded the collaborative effort to create a booth highlighting the work of the IAU Offices. This served as the central hub of the GA exhibition hall: a meeting place for all to discuss their work, network, and build collaborations. The OAO sessions during the conference highlighted the work of our National Outreach Coordinators, and our KASI-OAO Satellite Session focused on the importance of international collaboration to the advancement of astronomy communication. We also held a workshop on science communication that promoted relationship building as a key tool toward effective science communication.
7) 100 Hours of Astronomy
From 1-4 October 2022, the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach celebrated our shared skies and how it brings us together through 100 Hours of Astronomy. This project encourages our global community to host or participate in astronomy outreach events over 100 consecutive hours. The goal is to enable as many people as possible, from children to the elderly, to engage with the sky and gain a basic understanding of our astronomical surroundings. In 2022, 201 activities took place in 55 countries and brought together over 50,000 people.
8) NameExoWorlds 2022
In August 2022, the NameExoWorlds competition was launched to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Office for Astronomy Outreach. Teams from all around the world submitted proposals to name one of 20 extrasolar systems: an exoplanet and its host star. These 20 systems were special, as they will be among the first to be observed by JWST, giving us more information about the conditions on these worlds. We had 590 entries from over 90 countries. Our National Outreach Coordinators assembled National Panels to select their top three proposals that will then be sent to a committee made up of the IAU Executive Committee Working Group on Exoplanetary System Nomenclature and the exoplanets' discoverers. Stay tuned! The winners will be announced in the first quarter of 2023.
9) Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) Triptych a) CAPjournal
This year, the Communicating Astronomy with the Public Journal (CAPjournal) published its 31st issue, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach with articles that span a wide range of topics that exemplify the OAO's dedication to astronomy engagement, inclusion, and accessibility. We are currently in the editorial process of issue 32, which is a Special Edition on CAP Conference 2022 featuring articles from some of the top abstracts submitted to the conference.
b) CAP Conference 2022
This year, we also assisted with the Communicating Astronomy with the Public Conference that took place in Sydney, Australia this September. We would like to thank all the participants – both in person and online – the Local Organising Committee and the Virtual Organising Committee for all your hard work in making this a very successful conference. Stay tuned for more information about the next CAP Conference in 2024.
c) New Programme: CAP Training
This year, the Office for Astronomy Outreach began a new project, Communicating Astronomy with the Public Training, which completes our CAP triptych. This programme was born out of a joint IAU-Kavli Foundation project to produce public engagement training for professional astronomers. The pilot workshop that resulted from that project used the science of science communication to focus on relationship building as a tool for effective science communication. Subsequent trainings aim to give astronomy communicators the tools they need to bring opportunities to their communities, all within the framework of strategic science communication. Next year will feature many more trainings for our IAU Family, so stay tuned!
The Milky Way over Mina de S. Domingos, Achada do Gamo, in Alentejo, Portugal. Image Credit: S. Conceiçao
10) New Partnership: OAO-IA MOU
This year, the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach and the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal signed a memorandum of understanding for the joint development of international projects in astronomy outreach. Both the field of astronomy communication and those working within it will benefit from this collaboration, as it will increase the awareness of the importance of astronomy in education and, more broadly, our daily lives. We look forward to a fruitful year closely working with the Science Communication Group at IA and invite others to pursue formal collaborations with the OAO in the future.
11) IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach Newsletter in Non-English Languages
Our newsletter is being translated into the following languages:
Arabic
Translations are thanks to the members of the Bahrain Stargazers Astronomy Club.
Chinese (Simplified)
Translations are thanks to Dr Chen Cao, Shandong Astronomical Society (SDAS) of China.
Portuguese (European)
Translations are thanks to Catarina Leote and João Ferreira through the Astronomy Translation Network Portuguese Language Group.
Spanish
Translations are thanks to Andrea Ahumada of the Observatorio Astronómico, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, and Ileana Andruchow of the Instituto Astrofísica de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. For translations of previous Newsletters in Spanish, thanks to Emílio Zuniga of the Association of Amateur Astronomers in León, Nicaragua, click here.
If you are interested in translating the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach Newsletter into your language, please email public@oao.iau.org.
