It continues to impress us how people who do astronomy outreach have responded to the shift towards virtual events as we are met with the difficulties entailed with social distancing. It also continues to be impressive how astronomical research is helping researchers respond to the COVID-19. This issue of the newsletter highlights some of these outreach and research projects by our NOCs and IAU members.
We also highlight two ways you can be involved in projects in the Office for Astronomy Outreach: the Online Astronomy@Home Awards and the Meet the IAU Astronomers! programme.
Wishing you clear skies and good health! Lina Canas & Izumi Hansen, on behalf of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) Team
P.S. As a six-month reminder, please wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap, cover your cough and, if possible, wear a mask to help slow down the spread of COVID-19.
1) Online Astronomy@Home Awards
The deadline to apply for the Online Astronomy@HomeAwards is quickly coming up on 31 July 2020. These awards were created by the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach to recognise people who do astronomy outreach within these unprecedented times. The five categories for these awards are Most Innovative Event, Best Family Event, Outstanding Online Event, Largest Number of Registered Online Events Held by a Single Group and Community Engagement.
2) Meet the IAU Astronomers! Meeting Spots Still Available
The Meet the IAU Astronomers! programme, hosted through the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach, still has openings for educators, informal educators, and astronomy club leaders to bring an IAU-member astronomer into a meeting for their class, visitors or club virtually.
IAUS 367 “Education and Heritage in the Era of Big Data in Astronomy” will be held online from 8-12 December 2020. Registration is now free and abstract deadline has also been extended.
NOC Madagascar has helped organise a months-long online trivia contest for fellow Malagasy, and the five finalists faced off in the finals over the weekend. Congratulations to finalists Rakotondrainibe Ny Avo, Rabarisoa Antalia Ariel, Ramaromanana Nanie Larissa, Razanakoto Nampoina, Rabarison Dine for getting so far in the contest and NOC Madagascar for the success of this online astronomy competition.
Our NOC Costa Rica has produced a webpage to help observers in the region observe C/2020 F3 (Comet NEOWISE). The webpage includes different resources and maps in Spanish and it will continue to be updated in the coming weeks.
Thank you to Alejandra León Castellá for sharing this resource with us
6) NOCs Support Medical Response to COVID-19
A number of NOCs and IAU members, as well as the Office of Astronomy for Development, have been involved with procuring ventilators to support the medical response to COVID-19 in South Africa through the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Thank you to Nadeem Oozeer for sharing this information with us.
7) African Astronomical Society Requests Information of Amateur Astronomy Groups
The Outreach Committee of the African Astronomical Society (AfAS) is creating a database of all the amateur astronomy groups in Africa in order to build a continental network of associations and strengthen connections between amateur and professional astronomers in Africa.
Information about the amateur astronomy groups can be submitted through one of the following forms:
Thank you to Niruj Ramanujan for sharing this information.
8) GALAXY CRUISE Classify 1000 Galaxies Campaign
GALAXY CRUISE, an online citizen science project of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), is holding the “Classify 1000 Galaxies in 1 Month” campaign beginning on 1 August. Participants can gain special virtual medals if they classify 300, 500 and 1000 galaxies, and contribute to the already 510 000 galaxies classified.
Japanese:http://bit.ly/2xlNyCR
Translations are thanks to Akihiko Tomita, through the Astronomy Translation Network.
You can subscribe to the Japanese newsletter through the Japanese Amateur Astronomers Association (http://www.jaaa-astro.jp/jaaa-ml.html) or the Japanese Society for Education and Popularization of Astronomy (http://www.tenkyo.net/).
If you are interested in translating the IAU Outreach Newsletter into your language, please email public@oao.iau.org.
11) Contributions to the IAU Outreach Newsletter—looking forward to hearing from you in 2020
Here at the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach, we’re always looking for news about astronomical education and outreach events around the world. Please continue to share your stories with us in 2020! If you are organising large-scale events at a regional or international level, offering astronomy education or communication job positions, have any innovative projects or inspiring stories, looking for professional-amateur collaboration in astronomy, or have created any educational resources, let us know by sending an email to public@oao.iau.org.
You can send us your suggestions until the 4th (for issue #1) and the 17th (for issue #2) day of each month. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
