We, the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach team, would like to wish all the best to our colleague Sze-leung Cheung, the outgoing International Outreach Coordinator (IOC), and to extend a warm thank you for his important services to the office and to the IAU over the past five years.
In this issue, we want to highlight the AstroVoices project by the IAU Women in Astronomy working group, encourage you to participate the Naming Contest for Newly-discovered Moons of Jupiter and challenge you to join our team here in Japan by applying to our open job position.
We want to to thank our National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) for their continuous work, especially this year, during the 100 years celebrations, where they also represent the IAU100 contact points in each country and are enthusiastically and continuously driving the celebrations around the world.
Wishing you all Happy Reading & Clear Skies! Lina Canas, on behalf of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach team
1) Join the IAU outreach team in Japan!
The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach has opened a call for a position at its IAU outreach team, based in Mitaka, Japan and welcomes applications from enthusiastic and driven outreach practitioners and science communicators to join! The IAU and NAOJ now seek an excellent individual to join the IAU outreach team and to provide support to the IAU OAO activities.
Lina Canas has been appointed as the new International Outreach Coordinator of the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach, hosted in Tokyo, Japan. The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) is a joint venture between the IAU and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). It is primarily responsible for managing the IAU’s communication and accessibility initiatives, and for supporting the international network of IAU National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) in more than 100 countries around the world.
3) AstroVoices, news from the IAU Executive Committee WG Women in Astronomy
AstroVoices is a project lead by the IAU Executive Committee WG Women in Astronomy for the 100th Anniversary of the International Astronomical Union, and aims at creating a short film featuring women astronomers from around the world to be released during 2019, IAU 100th Anniversary year, in order to promote the image of astronomers as an exciting career and to stimulate interest for women and girls everywhere.
4) Naming Contest for Newly-discovered Moons of Jupiter
In spring 2017, a team of astronomers saw the first signs of another twelve yet unknown moons orbiting Jupiter. After confirming these sightings with further observations, the discovery was announced in July 2018, bringing the total number of Jupiter’s known moons to 79, more than any other planet in our Solar System. The names of five of these new moons are now open to suggestions from the public in a naming contest held by the Carnegie Institute and is supported by the IAU, responsible for naming astronomical bodies and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN).
5) IAU Office of Astronomy for Development 2019 Projects
The Indonesia-Malaysia Project On Astronomy Education Using Tactile Image (IMPACTDome) is a mobile planetarium for visual impaired audiences. It is a miniature sphere in geodesic style consisting of a number of triangular and hexagonal segments joined together. It will be printed with tactile constellations on each side, for the northern sky and southern sky. Triangles can be placed in any segment of the dome and thus represent changes of constellation location due to time and latitude. The project also aims to set up collaborations between Malaysia and Indonesia through this effort.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) congratulates the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory on the signing of the international SKA convention. This convention formally establishes the SKA Observatory, which is an international collaboration working towards building the world’s largest radio telescope. The IAU strongly supports and promotes global cooperation on large facilities such as this, which are necessary to realise increasingly ambitious astronomical projects. The SKA will grant astronomers worldwide new opportunities to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, and will also drive innovative solutions to big data challenges, which will benefit society at large.
7) Celebrating The Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019)
“The United Nations declared 2019 The Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019) to raise the appreciation of our world’s rich cultural diversity through awareness of the alarming rate languages around the world are disappearing. Languages play a crucial role in the daily lives of people, not only as a tool for communication, education, social integration and development, but also as a repository for each person’s unique identity, cultural history traditions and memory.” (Ref. IYIL2019). The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach through the Astronomy Translation Network (ATN) has joined the celebrations by launching a challenge to our community: to translate two to three astronomy resources into endangered languages and help raise awareness to the cultural diversity of our world. The resources are related to the IAU100 celebrations “Under One Sky” and the importance of cultural heritage in connection to the night sky and dark skies protection.
Global Astronomy Month (GAM), is organized each April by Astronomers Without Borders and is one of the world's largest global celebrations of astronomy. Every year GAM brings new ideas and new opportunities, bringing enthusiasts together worldwide to celebrate Astronomers Without Borders' motto One People, One Sky. You can find this year’s program here and join the celebrations by finding an event near you.
Here you can find a list of astronomy outreach & education conferences and events around the world. Plan ahead for a very special year for Astronomy, full of interesting events!
a) 8th International Conference “New Perspectives in Science Education”
Dates: 21 - 22 March 2019
Location: Florence, Italy
More Information: https://conference.pixel-online.net/NPSE/
b) Yuri’s Night
Date: 12 April 2019
Location: All around the world
More information: https://yurisnight.net/e)
d) IAUS 350: Laboratory Astrophysics: from Observations to Interpretation
Date: 14 – 19 April 2019
Location: Cambridge, UK
More information: http://www.astrochemistry.org.uk/IAU_S350/
e) European Week of Astronomy and Space Science
Date: 24 – 28 June 2019
Location: Lyon, France
More information: https://eas.unige.ch//EWASS/
f) Starmus Festival V: A Giant Leap
Date: 24–29 June 2019
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
More information: https://www.starmus.com/
g) Asteroid Day
Date: 30 June 2019
Location: Around the world
More Information: http://asteroidday.org/
h) 3rd Workshop on Dissemination and Education of Astronomy (WDEA III)
Dates: 2 July (Solar Eclipse), 4- 5 July 2019
Location: San Juan, Argentina
More information at http://sion.frm.utn.edu.ar/WDEAIII/
j) Astronomy Education Conference: Bridging Research & Practice
Date: 16-18 September 2019.
Location: Garching, Munich, Germany,
More Information: http://iau-dc-c1.org/astroedu-conference/
k) IAUS358: Astronomy for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion — a roadmap to action within the framework of IAU centennial anniversary
Date: 12-15 November 2019
Location: Tokyo, Japan
More information: https://iau-oao.nao.ac.jp/iaus358/
Have we missed something? Then share your astronomy outreach and education international meetings or events with us via outreach@iau.org.
10) IAU Astronomy Outreach Newsletter in other languages
- Translations into Serbian are available, by Dr Liliana Gracanin from Serbia: https://twitter.com/IAU_srpski ;
- Translations into Japanese are available, carried out by Akihiko Tomita through the Astronomy Translation Network: http://bit.ly/2xlNyCR. If you want to receive the Japanese newsletter translation, please subscribe to the Japanese Amateur Astronomers Association here: http://www.jaaa-astro.jp/jaaa-ml.html, or the Japanese Society for Education and Popularization of Astronomy here: http://www.tenkyo.net/;
- Translations into Galician are available, by Martin Pawley, Agrupación Astronómica Coruñesa Ío, in Spain here: http://agrupacionio.com/gl/tag/boletin-iau
- Translations into Spanish are available by Emílio Zuniga, the Association of Amateur Astronomers from León, Nicaragua: http://asafile.blogspot.jp/p/blog-page_12.html;
- Translations into Italian are available by Eleonora Piromalli, AstronomiAmo, from Italy here: https://www.astronomiamo.it/DivulgazioneAstronomica/Newsletter-IAU/last
- Translations into Russian are available by Artem Mokhnaktin, Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pulkovo. You can find the latest translations of the newsletter here.
- Translations into (European) Portuguese are available, carried out by Catarina Leote, João Ferreira & Jonas Souza through the Astronomy Translation Network (ATN) Portuguese Language Group (the previous issue can be found here).
If you are interested in translating our newsletter into your language, please let us know via outreach@iau.org.
11) Contributions to the IAU Outreach Newsletter—looking forward to hearing from you in 2019
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 2019! 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 outreach@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.
