Interdisciplinary and egalitarian, the School Workshops on Astronomy have been being in their educational mission since 14 years. Here we present the concept, methods, and some example results of that educational technique.

Our ancestors contemplated an inspiring night sky of science, philosophy, art … today, it is estimated that one third of the world’s population have never seen the Milky Way. The progressive degradation of the quality of the night sky due to an inappropriate use of the artificial light at night, as well to other sources of sky pollution, must be considered as the fundamental loss of a scientific, cultural and environmental heritage of humanity.

In this public talk we summarized the most relevant aspects of light pollution, the reasons for promoting good lighting to protect dark skies, and some of the initiatives at a global level that are being developed to preserve the darkness of the night sky.

Total solar eclipses are popular targets for amateur astronomers. At the same time, the eclipses are still scientifically important to observe the solar corona. Therefore, the eclipses are a good chance for amateurs to participate in scientific observations. In fact, some of amateur astronomers in Japan have been carried out scientific observations at the total solar eclipses collaborating with professional solar scientists over more than ten years. Some scientific results have been produced from the collaboration. We present here our collaborative activities as a practical example of citizen science.

The National Schools’ Observatory is an educational platform that offers free access to all schools in the UK and Ireland to the world’s largest robotic telescope, the Liverpool Telescope. The website offers activities, resources for teaching and importantly Go Observing, the telescope interface. The website receives 1.5 million visitors a year and has registered users in 80 countries. The next generation of robotic telescopes offer a unique opportunity to build in education, that is open and accessible to all.

We present here an edutainment strategy to communicate science and technology which is strongly based on personal motivation of the learner candidate: participants/players learn because they find it useful/interesting in order to achieve their own goals in some unique game. Our own goal is to capture young people’s attention in an immersive and collective storytelling experience within the framework of a role-playing game specifically designed for scientific literacy. The first experiences in public high schools of Argentina are reported here.

We here present the general outline of the project “Open up, Sky!”, a pilot project of astronomy education in a Juvenile detention institution in Sardinia, Italy. The project is still in progress, and we report here the first preliminary results.

Children in elementary and middle school learn fundamental concepts of science in their local language. There seems to be some discrepancies between what they learn in school and up-to-date terminologies because academic terminologies are usually updated and shared only in English by each specific academic society. We introduce the online dictionary called as “The Internet Encyclopedia of Astronomy” compiled and provided by the Astronomical Society of Japan as an efficient solution for such terminology problem.

SeneSTEM aims to bring Senegalese children and young people into contact with science, and – by extension – with the STEM disciplines (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) in a very accessible and illustrative way. We do this with concrete workshops and experiments, for both teachers and for groups of children and young people. In collaboration with different educational organisations in Senegal, among which the Senegalese Association for the Promotion of Astronomy, SeneSTEM ensures that all layers of the population are enthusiastic about science (education). Special attention is given to motivating girls for scientific careers. SeneSTEM actions are based on an international collaboration partly supported by development funds from the city of Antwerp and the University of Antwerp (Belgium).

Since January 2020, the International Astronomical Union has an Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE). The OAE, which joins the previously existing IAU Offices for Astronomy for Development (OAD), Astronomy Outreach (OAO) and Young Astronomers (OYA) is hosted at Haus der Astronomie, a center for astronomy education and outreach operated by the Max Planck Society in Heidelberg, Germany. This contribution outlines the mission of the OAE, the current state of the office, its background, mission and collaborative structure, as well as the activities that have already started or are planned for the future.

The European Exoplanets-A project aims to provide a comprehensive view of the nature of exoplanet atmospheres, through an interdisciplinary approach.

Exoplanets-A includes a knowledge server where we provide the scientific results and educational resources gathered and developed during the project. In this proceedings, we present two such educational resources: a MOOC and an augmented reality application.

Girls’ under-representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is deep rooted and puts a detrimental brake on progress towards sustainable development. Both education and gender equality are an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, as distinct Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UNESCO Report: Cracking the code: Girls’ and women’s education in STEM provides a global snapshot of this underrepresentation and the factors behind it. The fight against stereotypes to ‘crack the code’, or to decipher the factors that hinder or facilitate girls’ and women’s participation in STEM (and particularly in Astronomy) education must take into account the persisting dichotomy between the so called two cultures.

Namibia is world-renowned for its incredibly dark skies by the astronomy community, and yet, the country is not well recognised as a dark sky destination by tourists and travellers. Forged by a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Namibia, together we are using astronomy as a means for capacity-building and sustainable socio-economic growth via educating tour guides and promoting dark sky tourism to relevant stakeholders.

In Thailand, annually there are more than 50 high school students presenting in the Thai Astronomical Conference (Student Session) and more than 20 high school students joining research activities mentored by their teachers and NARIT staff through the “Advanced Teacher Training” scheme. These opportunities offer a unique experience for students to learn various skills through proposing a research question, design research methodologies, acquire different knowledge conducting research, present and communicate their results and response to criticism. Data collection for this qualitative research study is conducted through interviews with the senior high school students who completed their research presentations, with a control group of students who did not have research-based learning experience but had other informal learning experiences such as planetarium visit, or after school astronomy activities. The study looks into students’ learning behaviour, attitude towards science, skills acquired for other subjects, interest in science careers.

Astronomy education is an efficient means of attracting more people to study science and not just astronomy. The diversity in the majors of the students allows us to expand the knowledge of astronomy to all fields. In this paper, we present our non-traditional method of using real data and observations for our College and University classes, it allows students to learn about the applications and how to use them to study the stars.

The Astronomical Society of Japan has started authorization of Japan Astronomical Heritage since 2018. The society certificates two or three sites/materials/literature every year not only for preservation but also for utilization. The certification influences citizens and local governments, and stimulates various movements. The idea of national astronomical heritage will help to preserve valuable properties of each country and to promote the utilization.

In the Planetarium of the city of Rosario the deaf and the hearing-impaired people could only perceive the visual elements of the show, such as the starry sky and the video images, which are meaningless without the narration. The technical team detected the problem and implemented a solution, adapting a particular show with a team of interpreters and a deaf person, with a low cost of development and arriving to great results.

Astronomical observations have been documented in pre-Hispanic cultures. However, little is known about the astronomical heritage of pre-Hispanic societies in Venezuela, since there are no evidence of an ancestral material culture as other regions of Meso and South America, and these native Venezuelan groups lacked a written, alphabetic or ideographic language. There are innumerable petroglyph deposits in almost all regions of Venezuela, especially near Lake Valencia (Carabobo state) and those of the Andean foothills (Barinas state). By means of computerized simulation and archaeoastronomy techniques, the occurrence of a total solar eclipse is verified: in July 1, 577 at the Vigirima site; and another total solar eclipse at noon on May 16, 1398 at the Bum Bum site. It is concluded that the contemplation of the total eclipses of the Sun, must lead to the need for communication and recording, and lacking any type of writing, they drew the phenomenon, using the techniques and means at their disposal: engraving on rocks.

This paper summarizes the talk given at this conference in which the cultural aspect of the low participation of women in science, mainly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas, is emphazised. A few personal recollections will be presented and some some striking numbers to illustrate the current situation will be given. In addition, some thought provoking ideas on what is known as “neurosexism” are explicited and a tribute is made to three women that overcame the challenges posed to them in different times in history (including current times) and helped paved the way to the new generation. However, there is still a long way to go. The inclusion of women and of other relegated sectors of society in scientific and technological activities is an important pending issue which will be achieved when our society as a whole reaches the necessary cultural maturity.

This contribution presents the ongoing work to develop the Sensing the Dynamic Universe (SDU) webpage elements, based on the sonoUno framework, a user centered software for sonification of astronomical data. The SDU provides an inclusive experience that transcends the approach of assuming and limiting design based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and ISO recommendations.

Though there are a variety of astronomy sonification software packages, none of them shown high granularity evidence of having been designed with a user-centric focus. SonoUno is a sonification package created taking into account the user from the beginning, and incorporates end user contact feedback for continuous improvements to the software. In this contribution, SonoUno user cases are presented with the soft corresponding updates, as well as the first description of a recent web page development.