Related papers: The CfAO's Astronomy Course in COSMOS: Curriculum …
Since 1990, the United Nations in cooperation with the European Space Agency is holding annually a workshop on basic space science for the benefit of the worldwide development of astronomy. These workshops have been held in countries of…
Recent advances in our understanding of the Universe have revolutionized our view of its structure, composition and evolution. However, these new ideas have not necessarily been used to improve the teaching of introductory astronomy…
We describe KAPAO, our project to develop and deploy a low-cost, remote-access, natural guide star adaptive optics (AO) system for the Pomona College Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) 1-meter telescope. We use a commercially available…
Art and science are different ways of exploring the world, but together they have the potential to be thought-provoking, facilitate a science-society dialogue, raise public awareness of science, and develop an understanding of art. For…
We report on the initial phase of an ongoing, multi-stage investigation of how to incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) technology in teaching introductory astronomy concepts. Our goal was to compare the efficacy of VR vs. conventional teaching…
An introductory lectures on cosmology at ITEP Winter School for students specializing in particle physics are presented. Many important subjects are not covered because of lack of time and space but hopefully the lectures may serve as a…
Cosmology education has become an integral part of modern physics courses. Directed by National Curricula, major UK examination boards have developed syllabi that contain explicit statements about the model of the Big Bang and the strong…
Funded by a $3M Department of Defense (DoD) National Defense Education Program (NDEP) award, we are developing and deploying on a national scale a follow-up curriculum to "Our Place In Space!", or OPIS!, in which approx. 3,500 survey-level…
Cultural Astronomy sits at the intersection of our study of the universe and the human experience, exploring how we observe the stars, interpret their motions, and incorporate them into our perspectives of the nature of reality. "Astronomy…
The ground-breaking image of a black hole's event horizon, which captured the public's attention and imagination in April 2019, was captured using the power of interferometry: many separate telescopes working together to observe the cosmos…
Computer science (CS) is increasingly becoming part of the curricula of K-12 education in different countries. However, there are few K-12 CS teachers, and tools to offer K-12 CS education are often limited. Massive Open Online Courses…
This study designs, implements, and evaluates a teaching strategy based on computational thinking (CT) 27 to strengthen the teaching of stellar astrophysics in secondary education. Thirty-one 11th-grade students 28 from the Escuela Normal…
Cosmic Reionization On Computers (CROC) is a long-term program of numerical simulations of cosmic reionization. Its goal is to model fully self-consistently (albeit not necessarily from the first principles) all relevant physics, from…
This contribution describes the concept, main structure and goals, and some highlighted outcomes, of the AstroCamp -- an international academic excellence program in the field of astronomy and physics created in 2012 and organized by Centro…
One of the most regular activities of amateur clubs is scientific outreach, a paramount channel to disseminate scientific results. It is typically performed through talks given by both experts (professional astronomers) and non-experts to a…
Pursuant to recommendations of the United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE III) and deliberations of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS), annual…
Astrotourism and related citizen science activities are becoming a major trend of a sustainable, high-quality tourism segment, core elements to the protection of Dark skies in many countries. In the Summer of 2020, in the middle of COVID…
Adaptive optics workbenches are fully functional optical systems that can be used to illustrate and teach a variety of concepts and cognitive processes. Four systems have been funded, designed and constructed by various institutions and…
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally…
The Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics created five panels to identify the science themes that would define the field's research frontiers in the coming decade. I will describe the conclusions of one of these, the Panel on…