Happy New Year to you all! We hope you had a restful holiday season, and that your 2024 is off to a great start.
This year, we are looking forward to an exciting lineup of projects and programmes that celebrate the IAU National Outreach Coordinators, in honour of the 10-year anniversary of the network. All of our Global Outreach Projects will focus on and feature their work, from the women in our network during Women and Girls in Astronomy, to the planetarium experts during 100 Hours of Astronomy. In August of this year, we will welcome new NOCs into our Network during the XXXII IAU General Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information about how to get involved with our NOC network, refer to the entry below.
We will soon be posting two vacancies with the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach: an International Outreach Officer and a Deputy Director. Stay tuned for more information about how to join the OAO family!
In the Newsletter below, you will find information about how to get involved in the OAO's activities for 2024. We have an exciting lineup this year, with plenty of opportunities for collaboration, learning, and building connections. Throughout this year, we encourage you to contact your National Outreach Coordinator to find out how you can get involved in their activities and spread astronomy throughout your own communities.
May your skies be dark and quiet,
Kelly Blumenthal, on behalf of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach Team
National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs)
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the official beginning of the IAU National Outreach Coordinator network. We will spend 2024 honouring the amazing work of our NOCs over the last ten years and planning the next decade of astronomy communication through the NOCs. As with each new triennium, we reorganise our NOCs network. This year, we will be welcoming new NOCs during the XXXII IAU General Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. If you are interested in becoming a part of this network – whether establishing a NOC team in your country or joining an existing team – please get in touch with us at public@oao.iau.org!
Every year, our celebration of women and girls in astronomy will take place between the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 February and International Women’s Day on 8 March. Following the success of the 2023 programming, we invite astronomy outreach professionals, amateur astronomy groups, professional astronomers, teachers, and community leaders to join us in the programme. You can host your own event to celebrate women and girls in astronomy, join the poster competition, or share your story within the astronomical field.
In alignment with our goals for Telescopes for All from 2023, we will continue to partner with Stars Shine for Everyone (Sterren Schitteren voor Iedereen, SSVI) and bring in our colleagues from the OAD network to lead the National Outreach Coordinators in workshops to build their own telescopes in both visible and radio wavelengths. These telescopes are constructed from everyday materials and open doors for many communities without access to mass-produced telescopes.
Dark and Quiet Skies
In May 2024, we plan to build off of the success of last year’s celebration of the dark and quiet sky. We will strengthen our connections with our collaborators, including the Center for Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Interference (CPS) and the International Day of Light (IDL). This year, we are continuing some key events from last year, including a light pollution pledge and survey of global light pollution initiatives. In the coming months, we will announce more details about how you can participate in the fight to end light pollution!
100 Hours of Astronomy
From 2 to 5 October 2024, the OAO invites astronomy outreach professionals, amateur astronomy groups, professional astronomers, teachers, and community leaders to join this 100-hour celebration of our shared skies. This year, we will be promoting activities related to planetariums in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the planetarium. We aim to work with partners like the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the International Planetarium Society to engage as many people from all over the world with their local planetariums as possible. Later this year, we will be posting more information about this project, so stay tuned!
LGBTQIA+ in Astronomy
In pursuit of our motto – astronomy for everyone – we are working to make astronomy a safe place for LGBTQIA+ communities. With the IAU EC WG Astronomy for Equity and Inclusion SubWG LGBTQ+ Communities in Astronomy and National Astronomical Research Institute (NARIT), we are helping to plan an in-person meeting in Thailand on this topic. This will take place from 19 - 23 February in person in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Registration is free, and all are encouraged to help us build a more inclusive astronomy community.
This August, Cape Town will welcome the largest international astronomy conference to its shores – the first time the IAU General Assembly will be on African soil. The OAO will be hosting three sessions during the conference, one of which will be in collaboration with the IAU Executive Committee Working Group on Professional-Amateur Relations.
Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) Triptych
a) CAPjournal
In January, we published the final issue in our two-part special edition of CAPjournal, honouring the centennial of the planetarium. In it, you will find stories of planetariums, large and small, from all over the world. Later this year, expect to see at least one more issue of CAPjournal published, this time featuring works from the general astronomy communication community.
This year, we will be hosting a survey of all readers and potential contributors to CAPjournal to understand your expectations and hopes for the journal’s future. In the meantime, you can read more about our updated submission guidelines on our website – including CAPjournal's new peer-review policy.
b) CAP Conference 2024
This year, CAP Conference will take place online and in-person at Cité de l’espace in Toulouse, France from 24 - 28 June 2024. The conference is targeted towards professionals from science communication, informal education, planetaria and science centres, as well as professional and amateur astronomers, journalists and creative personalities. This edition – CAP 2024 – will be the 11th in the series of conferences organised by the Commission C2 of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach. The conference aims to bring together the diverse worldwide community of Astronomy communicators, both in-person and virtually. Join the largest international astronomy communication conference by submitting your abstract and registering today! For more information on our themes for this year’s conference, review our website.
c) New Programme: CAP Training
This year, we look forward to continuing our CAP Training programme for our National Outreach Coordinators. In the past, these have included workshops on inclusive astronomy, grant writing, and social media management. This year, we will continue to look to our NOCs to build training programmes relevant to their needs.
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.
French
Translations are thanks to the Club d'Astronomie de Tabarre (CAT), a subset of the Haitian Astronomical Society (SHA). Translations of previous Newsletters into French were thanks to the Haitian Translation Group of Astronomy and are still available on this page.
Galician
Translations of the OAO Newsletter into Galician until March 2023 are thanks to Martin Pawley of the Agrupación Astronómica Coruñesa Ío in Spain.
Italian
Translations are thanks to Eleonora Piromalli of AstronomiAmo in Italy.
Portuguese (European)
Translations are thanks to João Ferreira and Frederico Arez 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.
