Edita Stonkutė¹, Gražina Tautvaišienė¹, Anita Heward², and Šarūnas Mikolaitis¹

1 Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University, Lithuania

2 University of Kent, United Kingdom

Europlanet Early Career Portal and Mentorship Platform [pdf]

One of the important goals of the Europlanet Early Career Portal (http://www.europlanet.tfai.vu.lt/) is to support and foster communication and dissemination of astronomical knowledge and professional expertise among the early career community. The last year has been a challenging time for everyone, but young people have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Therefore, the portal has contributed in supporting early career professionals in the planetary community and related fields. The Early Careers Training and Education Portal and Europlanet Mentorship Platform are run by the Vilnius University as part of the EC funded project "Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure" (https://www.europlanet-society.org/europlanet-2024-ri), in collaboration with the Europlanet Society and Europlanet Early Career network. This portal provides information on PhD positions, job opportunities, summer schools, and meetings relevant to early career professional and amateur astronomers as well as teachers. Through the Europlanet Mentorship Platform, we aim to help early career scientists to develop expertise, ask questions and discuss career plans with the support of more established members of the planetary community.

Juan Carlos Arias Cañón, Colegio El Minuto de Dios Ciudad Verde, Colombia

Inclusive Astronomy [pdf]

The inclusive astronomy project that takes place at the El Minuto de Dios Ciudad Verde school (Colombia), implements new technologies (STEAM), methodologies and workshops for students from vulnerable populations or with some type of special need (differentiated education), girls and boys in equality gender, using aspects of divergent and sensitive education to introduce the world of science and technology to these classes in times of virtuality through the study of astronomy and space science.

https://lco.global/education/partners/inclusive-astronomy/

https://astrobvi.org/

Saulė Kemėraitė, Young astronomers' camp, JAS, Lithunia

Young astronomers' camp, JAS [pdf]

Poster about JAS: who we are and what we do. https://www.mmlaboratorija.lt/edukacija/jaunju-astronomu-saskrydis

Since 2014 Art and Science Laboratory (MMLAB) annually carries out joint educational, art and astronomical research projects, the largest of which is the annual "Young astronomers' camp" (JAS), whose activities allowed young people to learn about the interaction between art and science and stimulated discussions on this topic. JAS is the only ongoing event of its kind for young people, and every year JAS brings together a growing number of young people interested in astronomy.

Rigonda Skorulskienė, Vilnius University, Lithuania

Astronomy Education in Lithuania [pdf]

Astronomy in the reformed curriculum There are no specialized school courses for astronomy, instead astronomy content will be found in Environmental Studies (a general term for science and social sciences in primary school); General Science (Year 1-2(4) of secondary school) and in Physics (Year 3(5)-6) of secondary school. Year 7-8 astronomy courses will be only for the students who choose to learn Physics. 

In the primary education (1st-4th grade) children will be taught to recognize the Sun, Moon, planets, day and season changes, Earth satellites and their purposes. Finally, they will be explained how scientists study space. In the 5th grade, there will be a bigger focus on the Solar system (asteroids, comets, small solar system bodies). Students will be taught differences between meteoroids, meteors and meteorites, the cosmic distances will be discussed and their unit of measurements. In the 6th grade, Students will be taught live and virtual stargazing, space objects and occurrences. The meaning of constellations and space research will be discussed as well. In the 7th grade, Solar and Moon eclipses, devices to study the sky, and safe use of telescopes will be taught. Different telescope types, as well as the history of stargazing and space science, will be discussed. In the 8th grade, nuclear synthesis, as the energy of the star will be explained. Composition/structure of the Sun, history of space and its expansion, stellar evolution will be analyzed. Finally, star and planets exploration (transit method), and types of planets harbored by different types of stars. In the 9th grade, the Kepler's laws of planetary motion will be analyzed. Acceleration of free-fall due to gravity will be compared on Earth and other planets. In the 10th grade, Earth magnetic poles, magnetic field, and its importance for life on Earth will be analyzed, as well as astronomical studies using electromagnetic waves.

Álvaro Folhas, Agrupamento de Escolas Agueda Sul; NUCLIO; CITEUC; FPCEUC, Portugal

Astronomy: A lever for Science Education [pdf]

Education and training are fundamental foundations for the future of societies in any country. The current world poses new challenges to education in face of the development of scientific and technological knowledge, generating, every day, an exponential growth of information on a global scale. According to the OECD Skills Strategy (2015) “Skills have become the fundamental driving force for economic success and individual well-being in the 21st century. Without adequate investment in skills, people remain on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into growth and countries are no longer able to compete in economies that are increasingly based on knowledge”. About that, the OECD Education Project 2030 proposes that countries find answers to two fundamental questions:
• What knowledge, skills and attitudes do we need to develop (and adopt) to prepare our students for the future?
• How can education systems promote this knowledge, skills and attitudes effectively?
These needs force us to rethink School and the Teaching models, creating stimulating and challenging STEM activities, embracing several subjects as a whole. Knowledge, as life, is interdisciplinary, and this interdisciplinarity must have an increasing presence in school activities.
Astronomy is probably the most interdisciplinary field of knowledge, offering a fertile ground for the development of challenging activities and projects that mobilize the interest of students, developing a taste for Science, but also stimulating a set of skills that they will need for the challenges of the 21st century.
Over many years I have developed activities with students at School’s Science Clubs, in non-formal education, using Astronomy as the main lever for learning. Students participated voluntarily in these activities, just because it’s fun and so different from regular classes. These activities range from astronomical observation sessions, using small optical telescopes, and construction for didactic exploration of small devices (such as spectroscopes, sundials, quadrants, apparatus for determining the solar diameter) to scientific work, such as asteroid research (IASC Project) , measurement of sunspots or lunar craters, determination of stellar magnitudes to study supernovae and rotation of our galaxy, using the professional telescopes of the Faulkes Telescope Project and the EU-HOU radio telescope constellation. Other activities, such as the Experience of Eratosthenes, are already being developed within an interdisciplinary framework, involving different curricular disciplines, in it’s own schools curricular time.
Most of the activities carried out were promoted by NUCLIO - Núcleo Interativo de Astronomia e Inovação na Educação, that develops a meritorious work by developing and disseminating projects and initiatives involving Astronomy and Teaching all around the world, providing the necessary resources for the development most of the activities referred to in this work.
We have to light the brightness in our student’s eyes.

Antoaneta Avramova-Boncheva, The Institute of Astronomy and National Astronomical Observatory, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; Astronomical observatory "Nicolaus Copernicus" Varna, Bulgaria

Astronomy classes at the Astronomical observatory [pdf]

The Astronomical Observatory “Nicolaus Copernicus” is an educational institution that annually organizes Astronomy classes for elementary and high school students. Our main topics are exploring the starry sky, constellations - bright stars and Messier objects, Solar system, Milky way and Hubble classification. One of the best tools of learning and illustrating are the lessons in a dome-covered room with a planetarium projector by Zeiss. At the same time observations are organized in a nearby observatory (Avren), where light pollution is less. Observations are made both visually through binoculars or a telescope, and photographically.

This year's pandemic situation has necessitated the search for new tools to illustrate the knowledge of our galaxy - the Milky Way and the types of galaxies. For this purpose, we used platforms such as Galaxy Zoo, materials from the site of the GAIA mission, free open source planetarium and Google Quizzes. The latter are compiled into videos that students keep as a memory of their classes in a remote environment.

Here we will present some of the activities and tools we use during the classes to inspire students to look up on a clear night!

Jan Szauman-Szumski, Colegio Huerta de la Cruz, Algeciras, Spain

Habitable zone: could terrestrial life survive on the Moon? [pdf]

An accurate definition of the habitable zone is of great importance for the search of life in planets others than the Earth. The habitable zone is customarily defined as the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure. Other requirements are that the greenhouse effect does not increase temperatures above a determined threshold, that volcanic activity does not drastically increase this greenhouse effect, that the planet owns a magnetic field strong enough for protection against highly-charged particles, or that the planetary albedo is not too high.

Just like the planetary systems, an habitable zone can be also defined for galaxies. The habitable zone of a galaxy is usually located from the centre of the galaxy within a radius ranging from 13,000 to about 33,000 light years, about a half of the galactic disk. Further away from this limit, the metallicity of the stars is too low to allow the formation of telluric planets like the Earth, and at distances closer to the galactic centre conditions for life are more hostile due to the higher exposition to more energetic and violent events like supernovas or black holes.

The Earth and our solar system are located at a radius of 27,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way, within this habitable zone in the galaxy. But although on the Earth more than 8,7 millions of living species can be found, closer planets like Venus or Mars or our Moon are apparently inhabitable. From the physical and chemical properties of the Moon, which could be the most difficult to bear for terrestrial organisms? Furthermore, which of the 5 kingdoms of the natural world could tolerate better the harsh conditions of our satellite?

In 2019 the Chinese mission Chang’e 4 succeeded in the germination of Earth cotton seeds under the 1/6 gravity and long-term super cold environment on the far side of the Moon, while results of parallel experiments with potatoes, cress and breed silk worms may be published soon. From this starting point we wondered if these species were the best options to be the first lunar settlers, the “ambassadors” of planet Earth on another celestial body, so we set off “The Challenge of the five Kingdoms” a project for 10-11 year-old students which aims a comparison of the five Kingdoms of the natural world and asses their capacity to overcome variations in two physical properties: light and temperature. In doing so, we have tried to elucidate who could it be the super-organism with the best chances to survive on the Moon.

Our project studies the concept of the habitable zone and the characteristics of living organisms in accordance with the Primary school science curriculum. In the course of this research, students have analysed scientific papers, investigated about animals and plants development processes and performed scientific experiments with individuals from all the kingdoms in order to contrast their hypotheses.

This study is also a continuation of our astrobiology projects in which we work with students of different ages and their families.

Bertrand Goldman, International Space University, France

Bringing open clusters to the high-school [pdf]

Open clusters allow us to imagine the very different sky humanity would see if the Sun was (still?) located in one. The Gaia data easily let non-astronomers select members of nearby open clusters, which may be familiar to high-school students, like the Pleiades, and connect with astronomy history and mythology. The Gaia colour-magnitude diagram permits the educator to introduce important notions like the main sequence, and stellar evolution.

In this (yet-to-be-tested) workshop, we propose high-school students to go and search for cluster members in Gaia data using Topcat and the VO; use Topcat to visualize the stars and their motion in 3D; and finally use Gaia Sky to roam the cluster.

Nadia Kaltcheva¹, Maia Nenkova²

1. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA

2. Seneca College, Toronto, Canada

Interactive Teaching of Astronomy Concepts [pdf]

Among the STEM disciplines, astronomy is probably the one where the educational aspect benefits most from the field’s professional databases and open-source software. Various classroom activities can be developed at both entry and more advanced levels utilizing these extensive resources. We provide examples that could be used to enhance students' understanding of stellar magnitudes and distances, stellar classification, and stellar properties. This approach is helpful in active learning of basic astronomical concepts and techniques, while keeping the emphasis on the latest developments in astronomy.

Priya Hasan, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, India

Star Clusters in the Gaia Era [pdf]

Star clusters are groups of stars that formed from the same molecular cloud, at the same distance, of the same age, varying only in mass. They are unique objects for which we can find stellar parameters using the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Gaia is an ESA astrometric and photometric survey to study a billion stars of our Galaxy. We shall study the importance of using Gaia data to study star clusters. I shall demonstrate use of TopCat with Gaia data for analysis of star clusters and will be used to find the distances to a known star cluster for school students.

Linas Smigelskas, Lithuanian Museum of Ethnocosmology

Presentation of the Lithuanian Museum of Ethnocosmology [pdf]

The idea of ethnocosmology was born on the Kaldiniai Hill in Lithuania. Its founding fathers were Gunaras Kakaras, head of staff at the astronomical observatory, and Libertas Klimka, senior research associate at the Semiconductor Physics Institute and an avid enthusiast of ethnoculture. Kakaras fascination with the celestial sphere, and Klimka’s with ethnology found something in common – the Lithuanian nation’s connection with the sky, the Sun, the Moon, and stars. Such were the origins of ethnocosmology – both of the term and the future museum. On 15th March 1990 the Museum of Ethnocosmology was established. The main task of the Lithuanian Museum of Ethnocosmology is to collect, accumulate, systematize, preserve, research, expose the information on the relationship of a man and mankind with the Cosmic World and to provide it to the visitors. Ethnocosmological information may be the following: ethnographic material therein texts, songs, rites, symbols; scientific works and science achievements, space technology and results of space exploration programs, audio, video or photo materials; heavenly sight through the telescope; artworks; philosophical and religious texts, etc. During 2007–2008 the museum was restored. The works were financed in accordance with the EU Cohesion Fund aid program “The Expansion of Services” by the Tourist Complex at the Lithuanian Ethnocosmology Museum. In November of 2008, the very first excursions were organized. The Museum has become a peculiar center of culture where resilient links of a man, nation and mankind with the Cosmic World are disclosed in broad panorama and now we have more than 40 000 visitors from Lithuania and other countries every year. We have day and night time programs, 80 and 40 cm telescopes for public observations, various educational programs, events, for example, our Museum celebrates International Asteroid Day. The Museum of Ethnocosmology attaches great importance to the education of schoolchildren and students where the knowledge directly interlaces with the formation of world outlook, with cognitive astronomical observations, where new questions arise next to the answers. Estimating the uniqueness of the content of the Lithuanian Museum of Ethnocosmology – opening to visitors the space of human existence in the Universe, emphasizing all the relations with the Cosmic World – from ethnic relationship to the achievements of space exploration programs of the states of the world.

Carlos Viscasillas Vázquez, Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University, Lithuania

Teaching astronomy with Scratch [pdf]

In recent years, programming languages for children have undergone a remarkable development. A notable example is Scratch, developed at MIT and which gathers millions of users around the world. In the present work we show the possibilities of using Scratch 3.0 to teach astronomy. Specifically, we present the AstroScratch project, a compilation of astronomical simulators in continuous development. AstroScratch consists of a package called ExAcTOS, and two simulators of comets and exoplanets. These projects are an example of the high possibilities that this programming language offers, and its potential also in the context of the Milky Way.

Agop Uzunbohosyan, Astronomical observatory - Kardzhali, Bulgaria

Summer school of astronomy - Beli brezi: 50 years of experience [pdf]

We want to present our Summer school of astronomy for students of astronomy and young amateur astronomers. It has started during the summer of 1970 in the site called Belite Brezi (White Birches), about 300km south-east from the capital Sofia, as a practise of the students from Sofia University. Year after year not only students from Unversity but also young amateur astronomers from all over Bulgaria and abroad have come to the school. At the present days the school is equipped with a few 15 inches and 10 inches telescopes, CCD cameras and DLSR cameras, Lhires spectrograph. By using this equippment the participants can observe variable stars, globular clusters, nebulae, meteors etc. They make photometrical and spectroscopical observations, process the data, analyze them and at the end of the school present their results. During the day the participants listen lectures from professional astronomers, participate practical classes. For the several years the summer school has been organised by Astronomical club Vega under the financial support of America for Bulgaria Foundation.