The African Network of Women in Astronomy and STEM for GIRLS in Ethiopia initiatives have been established with aim to strengthen the participation of girls and women in astronomy and science in Africa and Ethiopia. We will not be able to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals without full participation of women and girls in all aspects of our society and without giving in future the same opportunity to all children to access education independently on their socio-economical status. In this paper both initiatives are briefly introduced.

We present the data related to the revealed astronomical oldest observatories at the territory of Ukraine and describe briefly the principles of observations which could be realized at these sites with usage of megalithic stones. Among these oldest observatories are as follows: the stone complex at the Lysyna Kosmatska mountain (Charpatian region); Bakhchysaray Menhir in Crimea; a complex of shafts at the Mavrin Maidan near Pavlograd city.

We present recommendations for teachers and educators of science, based on the results of a survey carried out among secondary-school students from Poland, Australia, and the USA.

We shall describe the various activities done by us in Covid Times including outreach and educational workshops in Physics and Astronomy. We shall discuss the caveats in virtual teaching of Astronomy and the lessons learnt in the process.

The SciAccess Initiative (“SciAccess”) is dedicated to advancing disability inclusion and diversity in STEM education, outreach, and research. In this paper, the authors present an overview of accessible STEM programs run by the SciAccess Initiative, including an annual conference, international working group, and space science mentorship program for blind youth. Recommendations for creating accessible mentorship programs and networking events, both virtually and in-person, are detailed so that these inclusion-focused efforts may be replicated by others.

The contact with science is very important to the development of a conscious citizen, even if he, or she, never work with. Astronomy is an excellent way to do this approximation, simply because everyone can see the sky and has questions about it. This project aims to use observational night to discuss the classroom situations. We have made interventions in a rural local school in Caçapava do Sul (Brazil) during five years which we explain what we will see and, after that, we observe it. Since 2018, we have used the Caçapava do Sul Meteorite, that available a direct contact with a real space rock, when everyone can test the resistance and the weight of this meteorite. During this time it was almost 2 000 people has been attending by us and we noted that the students had increased their notion and comprehension about science in general.

Two important strategies on astronomy education in the era of digital transformation proposed on this presentation are the uses of “Astronomy Literacy” and a “Deep Learning” through “Data Intensive Astronomy” to support astronomy education.

Astronomy literacy can create several thinking skills to young generation and public for promoting human capacity buildings on science and technology.

Nowadays, the astronomical data archives are impressively large and the “digital age” has made it easy to make the data available to astronomers, researchers, under graduate and graduate students and even to publics. Big data in astronomy has then played an important role in astronomy education both in higher education and school education. Astronomers and researchers can access “big data” for the deep learning through data intensive astronomy on their research works and school students and publics.

We hope to extend these strategies through regional and inter-regional collaboration to promote astronomy education in wider scale.

Open Astronomy is an important and valuable goal, including the availability of refereed science papers and user-friendly public astronomy data archives. The latter allow and encourage interested researchers from around the world to visualise, analyse and possibly download data from many different science and frequency domains. With the enormous growth of data volumes and complexity, open archives are essential to explore ideas and make discoveries. Open source software is equally important for many reasons, including reproducibility and collaboration. I will present examples of open archive and software tools, including the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA), the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS), the 3D Source Finding Application (SoFiA) and the Busy Function (BF). Astronomy is international and includes or links to an incredibly wide range of sciences, computing, engineering, and education. Its open nature can serve as an example for world-wide interdisciplinary collaborations.

Prasat Hin Phanom Rung, located in Buriram Province of Thailand, is an ancient temple that had been built between the 10th and 13th century. The temple, which is off east-west orientation by 5.5° towards north, has unveiled the astonishing phenomena exhibiting both astronomical and architectural intellect of the ancient builders. The phenomena involve perfect quarterly-alignments of the sun through all the fifteen doorways of the temple. The phenomenal orientation of this ancient architecture has been elucidated by several scholars—including historians, archaeologists, and astronomers—that it might be related to solar or lunar events only. However, our studies have otherwise found a clue to this mystery that it may be based on how the ancient intelligence used stars in the zodiacal constellations to regulate agricultural calendars. In this study, we find that Phanom Rung was oriented with respect to Spica such that on the day Spica set on the west-side doorway at dawn, the sun was entering Mesha Rashi (Aries). This day has a direct connection to a New Year’s Day of Saka calendar (Śaka Era), presently called Thaloeng Sok Day. Furthermore, we have found the relationship between Spica and the full moon of Caitra from which the intercalary month-year (Adhikamas) was detected.

This resource was developed to help bring this exciting area of research into the classroom. It consists of two practical activities appropriate for the K12 curriculum.

Each of the activities is standalone, takes around 60 minutes to complete and can be used either during lessons or as part of a science club. Each offers plenty of opportunity for extension work and includes a taking it further section to allow students to build on what they have learnt through independent research. The activities can be used individually, or in combination. We have already implemented them during the astrophysics summer courses we offer to school students at the National Observatory of Athens, with great success.

Astronomical observatory publications include the work of local astronomers from observatories around the world and are traditionally exchanged between observatories through their libraries. However, large collections of these publications appear to be rare and are often incomplete. In order to assess the unique properties of the collections, we compare observatories present in our own collection from the university at Copenhagen, Denmark with two collections from the USA: one at the Woodman Library at Wisconsin-Madison and another at the Dudley Observatory in Loudonville, New York.

This contribution presents earliest records in the Indian stone inscriptions and literature that specifically mention the eclipse as total or annular and the eclipses that timed with wars. Solar cult temples can be found all over India. In a few, the assigned dates coincide or are close to the dates of solar eclipses of large magnitude in the area.

ITAU, the Iranian teacher’s astronomy union, has attempted for many years to introduce astronomy to the teachers and students not only in Iran but also around the world by providing various materials and projects. The primary goal of ITAU is also to protect the environment with a help of students; therefore, first, try to change the attitude of students. SINA, Student’s International Network for Astronomy, will follow the goals.

Traditional visual aids used in astronomy outreach (such as 2D telescope images) can fail to effectively convey complex and abstract ideas to lay audiences. With the advent of impressive CGI images widely available in film and other media, these aids may also not meet their expectations or visually engage people. To address this, we have been employing 3D holograms in lieu of 2D images for astronomy-based outreach activities both in-person (pre-pandemic), and virtually since the start of the pandemic. Here we demonstrate how the reader can make and incorporate holograms in their own virtual talks (no budget required) and present the feedback we’ve received so far.

This contribution explores the reframing of promoting Astronomy as popular science, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through STEAM Innovation, integrating science and arts, such as Astro-Music and Space Art, would be a case in point of forced association. It redefines our methodology of Astronomy education and encourages the engagement of teachers from other disciplines. Supporting with user-centered design thinking, this pedagogy contributes effectively to the interactive teaching for solving real-life problems related to Astronomy.

The 2020 pandemics has brought about a revolution in education, thanks to the pervasiveness of online teaching. Contents, methods and techniques can now be rapidly shared across the globe. On the downside, a number of disciplines have been neglected or dropped altogether. Our paper aims to address the following questions: How has Astronomy in culture been affected? Why is it important to keep it alive? What are the solutions? We suggest that it has been dismissed for two reasons: first, it is perceived as a niche topic – some sort of erudite chatter about non-essential curiosities – that can be sacrificed in favour of more practical information; second, it is heavily culture-specific, meaning that it requires extra effort from the teachers, as it cannot be easily copied or translated from other sources.

During the last years, the amount of data has skyrocketed. As a consequence, the data has become more expensive to store than to generate. The storage needs for astronomical data are also following this trend. Storage systems in Astronomy contain redundant copies of data such as identical files or within sub-file regions. We propose the use of the Hadoop Distributed and Deduplicated File System (HD2FS) in Astronomy. HD2FS is a deduplication storage system that was created to improve data storage capacity and efficiency in distributed file systems without compromising Input/Output performance. HD2FS can be developed by modifying existing storage system environments such as the Hadoop Distributed File System. By taking advantage of deduplication technology, we can better manage the underlying redundancy of data in astronomy and reduce the space needed to store these files in the file systems, thus allowing for more capacity per volume.

In the past, Western academic astronomy has conceived in a very specific way its interests. However, in recent decades there has been a promising openness to the rest of the society, in the context of areas such as education, heritage and outreach. Despite this, there has not been an adequate scientific approach to do it, which would imply taking into account the social sciences and a truly interdisciplinary perspective. Here we want to develop the idea that this interdisciplinary approach already exists and it is called: Cultural Astronomy. Unfortunately, in the context of academic astronomy it has been only seen as a study of the “astronomies of others”, intended as previous stages or failed attempts of Western academic astronomy. We will seek to show that Cultural Astronomy, as a critical reflection on the social character of the astronomical knowledge, is key to the success of these opening efforts.

This contribution summarizes the reconstruction of historical constellations. It is based on studies of classics, philologies, history of science and history of art. In the given brevity, I can only sketch the strategic, scientific and educational reasons.

The “Turn on the Night” associated event had presentations on the latest dark skies protection issues considered by the IAU’s Dark and Quiet Skies working groups. Presentations were also made on dark skies education programs and cultural/scientific heritage.