Despite the many amazing advances that have occurred in the space sciences (planetary science, heliophysics, astronomy, and cosmology) these subjects continue to play minor roles in pre-collegiate science education. Similarly, the Earth sciences are woefully under-represented in most school science programs – despite their vital relevance to our physical well-being. Some countries have educational standards that formally prioritize the Earth & space sciences as much as the physical and life sciences, but even they fail to actualize their mandated priorities. I contend that better coordination and advancement of Earth & space science education at the national, state, society, and educator levels would lead to better educational outcomes worldwide.

On the occasion of celebration of moon landing (2019) we designed a set of educational activities for the youngest, based on the moon. We wanted to talk, play and engage young people reflecting and enjoying different points of view and demystifying the idea of science and scientists in a personal and meaningful journey. After this year of experimentation we also engaged with public schools co-designing and tailoring those activities despite the current sanitarian crisis. We will describe a physical artifact called ‘Lunatario’ and its 3d printable version together with cross-disciplinary educational activities and our tentative documentation. We will also describe how, with the help of a very diverse team, we embedded other media in our moon exploration working in particular with picture books and animation. We believe this is a great way to deeply engage young people with STEAM in a democratic way.

Africa has amazing potential due to natural (such as dark sky) and human resources for scientific research in astronomy and space science. At the same time, the continent is still facing many difficulties, and its countries are now recognising the importance of astronomy, space science and satellite technologies for improving some of their principal socio-economic challenges. The development of astronomy in Africa (including Ethiopia) has grown significantly over the past few years, and never before it was more possible to use astronomy for education, outreach, and development as it is now. However, much still remains to be done. This paper will summarise the recent developments in astronomy research and education in Africa and Ethiopia and will focus on how working together on the development of science and education can we fight poverty in the long term and increase our possibilities of attaining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in future for benefit of all.

When we talk about Astronomy, we normally do not take into account that we are using a cultural specific way of understanding the sky. Astronomers, either professional, amateur or just lovers of the sky nowadays tend to approach the sky from the point of view of modern science. There, we approach the sky as something that needs to be explored, understood and explained.

However, this vision was not always like that, or even in other cultures is/was completely different. For centuries, the human being has comprehended the sky, its changes and constancies, as part of their world, as part of the environment, as part of their everyday life.

In this paper, I review a few of these different ways of approaching the sky in several cultures, from the Near East to Rome or the Andes and how we can use them today for education, outreach and heritage management.

The communication project “Herschel and the invisible end of the rainbow” features the year 1800 discovery and today’s application of infrared radiation through diverse methods and different media in order to reach a wide audience. The discovery of the sun’s infrared radiation by the Herschels is demonstrated in a creative way through the publication and performance of a theatre play and accompanying audio play. The documentation of the historical discovery, which changed both science and our daily life, is further supplemented by background information e.g. on the role of women in science in the late 18th and early 19th century. By this, the history of the discovery of infrared radiation becomes alive and easily comprehensible. Additionally, we carry out interactive experiments and demonstrations using a capable thermal infrared camera by which a mostly unknown and strange infrared world becomes visible for all generations. Our recent findings with the infrared space telescope Herschel are used to exemplify modern science use. With this colourful, diverse and interactive communication concept, which is easily extendable and adaptable, we already took part in several science festivals, workshops and training events.

We evaluated a new approach to the automated morphological classification of large galaxy samples based on the supervised machine learning techniques (Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression, and k-Nearest Neighbours) and Deep Learning using the Python programming language. A representative sample of ∼315000 SDSS DR9 galaxies at z < 0.1 and stellar magnitudes r < 17.7m was considered as a target sample of galaxies with indeterminate morphological types. Classical machine learning methods were used to binary morphologically classification of galaxies into early and late types (96.4% with Support Vector Machine). Deep machine learning methods were used to classify images of galaxies into five visual types (completely rounded, rounded in-between, smooth cigar-shaped, edge-on, and spiral) with the Xception architecture (94% accuracy for four classes and 88% for cigar-like galaxies). These results created a basis for educational manual on the processing of large data sets in the Python programming language, which is intended for students of the Ukrainian universities.

This work presents the motivation, history and current status of the Primera Luz initiative, a long-term educational project run by researchers and professionals of the Astronomy Center (CITEVA) at Universidad de Antofagasta (UA, Chile), primarily focused on connecting Astronomy with the people living in the Region of Antofagasta (Chile) but producing results designed to be shared with international audiences.

The Astronomical Society of the University of Carabobo (SAUC) is an activity of permanent scientific dissemination, which uses Astronomy as a tool for the scientific enculturation of the local population and non-formal teaching of Science and Technology. The SAUC base their Learning activities through the Bachelard epistemology and Morin pedagogy. Furthermore the focus of the dissemination and popularization of Astronomy must focus on knowledge for life and on overcoming epistemic obstacles between knowledge expert and knowledge taught. The SAUC’s activities are focused on holding Master Class, seminars, astronomy courses for amateurs; development of multimedia materials and the national astronomical ephemeris. The qualitative evaluation, after two decades of activities of the SAUC allows us to conclude that astronomy can affect as a motivating axis for cultural appropriation and scientific enculturation by broad sectors of the local community, regardless of age, gender, race, socio-economic activity, or ideological-cultural diversity.

At any stage of education, the students begin to study astrophysics with previous incorrect preconceptions that impedes the understanding of new scientific notions. It is a waste of time to add new concepts on a “weak basis”. In this case the duty of any teacher is to spend more time to carefully remove preconceptions from students’ minds. In the present article there are reviewed some of the most common preconceptions of the students when they are learning astrophysics with the right solutions to break them down using some active teaching methods, especially experiments and models.

The increase in the amount of scientific information in heliophysics is related to both quantitative – increasing the number of high-power telescopes and the size of light receivers coupled to them, and qualitative reasons – new modes of observation, large-scale and multiple studies of the solar corona in different ranges, large-scale numerical experiments to simulate the evolution of various processes and formations, etc. The paper discusses the role and importance of methods for processing images of the solar corona, the store of obtained “raw” data and the need to access high-performance computing systems in order to obtain scientific results from the observational experiments, the need of international collaboration and access to the data in the era of increase in the amount of scientific information in heliophysics.

Active learning methodologies have been used to teach science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics at higher education institutions in several countries. We report the results of using peer instruction in an Astronomy undergraduate course taught at a research university in Brazil. The course syllabus covered topics on astrometry and celestial mechanics at an introductory level and was offered in the second semester of 2018. In order to better investigate the effect of the interaction among students, we have asked them to talk to their peers after the first poll regardless of the outcome. We have then analyzed the outcomes of all peer instruction polls, before and after student interaction, as well as the course evaluation questionnaires answered by the students at the end of the semester. From these analyses we were able to establish an approximation between peer instruction and some key elements of Vygotsky’s social interactionist theory.

An interdisciplinary course about Mars for teachers and science students is presented. The focus of the course is on planning for a journey with humans to the planet Mars. Issues in ethics, morality, rights and obligations, conflict management and human psychology as well as rocket orbits, fuel economy, radiation hazards and knowledge of the solar system are included. Examination of the teacher students include interpretation of the course material for future pedagogical usage.

Cultural astronomy is the study of the astronomy of ancient cultures and is sometimes called the anthropology of astronomy. The many ways that astronomy was used by ancient cultures are fascinating and this can be used to inspire interest in all astronomy, as well as astronomy in culture. Archaeoastronomy is interdisciplinary and among its practitioners are not only astronomers and astrophysicists, but also anthropologists, archaeologists, and Indigenous scholars. Much can be learned about ancient cultures though examination of how and why they used astronomy. This paper will highlight several examples that can capture public attention.

History, Maths and Astronomy are all mixed up in an innovative educational project that is being carried out in the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de La Laguna, in Spain. Students learn how to teach (to primary school students) about the shape of the Earth, the distances to the Moon, the Sun and other planets, collecting their own data with simple instrumentation and, most important, to connect ideas and different disciplines. The structure and contents of this project are presented, as well as examples of the activities that are carried out.

In this article we describe the recent history of astronomy in South Africa from the perspective of development. We describe how all major astronomy initiatives have carried a component of development with them, be it capacity building or socio-economic development. We highlight some activities and conclude that South Africa’s coherent and ambitious strategy has led to substantial changes in the astronomy research community in South Africa and that the young astronomers now starting their careers are taking possession of a bright future.

The impressive transition from an era of scientific data scarcity to an era of overproduction has become particularly noticeable in archaeoastronomy. The collection of astronomical information about prehistoric societies allows the accumulation of global data on: – the oldest traces of astronomical activity on Earth, emotional and rational display of celestial phenomena in astronomical folklore, “folk astronomy” and timekeeping, in fine arts and architecture, in everyday life; – the most ancient applied “astronomy” – counting the time by lunar phases, accumulation and storage of ancient databases in drawings and pictographic compositions in caves and artificially constructed objects; – “horizon” astronomy as an initial form of observational cult astronomy, preserved only in characteristic material monuments (the oldest cult observatories) with indisputable astronomical orientations. The report shows the importance of collecting the maximum number of artifacts and monuments from prehistory associated with the early emergence of interest in celestial phenomena. Spiritual, emotional and rational (including practical) needs that have aroused interest in Heaven are discussed. The huge variety of activities in realizing the regularity (cyclicity) of celestial phenomena as a stimulus for their use for orientation in space and time is shown.

In this poster is presented the development and testing of a pilot project to teach basics of astronomy to primary school students. This is a learning program that bases on the interdisciplinary nature of astronomy with amusing and playful activities. The objective of the programme is to engage children in astronomy and make them aware of the importance of the development of science and technology for society. The program has been tested a small non-government-funded school in the state of Puebla, in Mexico. Due COVID-19 lockdown the classes had to switch from face-to-face to online. Over 80% of the students that completed the course had considerably increased their knowledge of astronomy and requested to continue with the classes on the next school term.

Students took an assembly-type telescope kit from a public elementary school and brought it to their homes in 2019. Three classes attempted to observe the Moon at home using the Kaifu-NAOJ Telescope Kit. As a result, all children observed the Moon at home using the kit. From their observations, around 90% identified the existence of craters and understood the reflection of sunlight on the Moon’s surface. As Covid-19 prevention measures in education, we propose the introduction of at-home telescopic observations for STEAM activities.

The language we speak, the culture in which we grew up and where we come from have a tremendous impact on the way we learn astronomy. Additionally, the historical predominance of Western culture has influenced the way our modern society sees the world, and of course, the sky. In this work, we will share author’s experience working as science advisor in an outreach institution, where he explored different strategies to reach diverse communities and bring astronomy closer to broader audiences.

Even though the construction of world-renowned astronomical observatories in Chile has boosted the interest in astronomy on the community, many challenges have not yet been addressed. One of them is to raise awareness about the ancestral heritage of Chilean’s first nations. Finally, we would like to highlight the importance of learning astronomy in our own language and therefore assure inclusion, diversity, and equity in our countries.

The Universe is full of galaxies of various shapes; some galaxies have spiral arms and others don’t. Why do galaxies show such diversity? How were galaxies formed and evolved? Galaxies are thought to grow by interacting and merging with other galaxies, and the galaxy mergers may be the key process creating the variety. GALAXY CRUISE is the first citizen science project conducted by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) to unlock galaxies’ secrets using the big observational data. We made the superior quality big data taken by the Subaru Telescope accessible to the public and invited them to participate in data classification. Here we report how we designed the website and its first-year progress.