Related papers: The AAVSO 2011 Demographic and Background Survey

The Commission Femmes et Astronomie conducted a statistical study that aims at mapping the presence of women in French professional Astronomy today, and set a starting point for studying its evolution with time. For the year 2021, we…

Citizen Science is research undertaken by professional scientists and members of the public collaboratively. Despite numerous benefits of citizen science for both the advancement of science and the community of the citizen scientists, there…

The contributions of everyday individuals to significant research has grown dramatically beyond the early days of classical birdwatching and endeavors of amateurs of the 19th century. Now people who are casually interested in science can…

Most students do not enroll in introductory astronomy as part of their major; for many, it is the last science course they will ever take. Thus, it has great potential to shape students' attitudes toward STEM fields for the rest of their…

The US astronomy/astrophysics community comes together to create a decadal report that summarizes grant funding priorities, observatory & instrumental priorities as well as community accomplishments and community goals such as increasing…

In a series of two papers, we provide a comprehensive agenda of actions the American Astronomical Society (AAS) can take to create a more diverse and inclusive professional system for astronomers, with a focus on women astronomers. This…

In this document we summarize the results of a survey of undergraduate degree-granting programs conducted by the 2024-2025 American Astronomical Society Education Committee's Subcommittee on UndeRgraduate and Graduate Education (SURGE).…

As many research papers in astronomy have been written since the beginning of the 21st century as had been written previously. This exponential growth has been accompanied by substantial changes in the structure of astrophysics research,…

The anecdotal connection between an interest in science fiction and career aspirations in astrophysics is well established. However strong statistical evidence for such a connection, and a quantitative assessment of its prevalence, has been…

We report on the results of a survey we conducted on the Japanese public's attitudes toward astronomy. This survey was conducted via an online questionnaire, with 2,000 responses received. Based on this data, we present what kind of…

We take a fresh look at about 60 years of recommendations for US federal funding for astronomical and astrophysical facilities provided by seven survey committees at roughly 10-year intervals. It remains true that very roughly one third of…

In this exploratory study we evaluated the engagement, performance and preferences of older adults who interacted with different citizen science tasks. Out of 40 projects recently active on the Zooniverse platform we selected top ones to be…

The Astronomical Genealogy Project (AstroGen) has been underway since January 2013. This project of the Historical Astronomy Division (HAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has been online since July 2020, courtesy of the AAS. The…

Eight years after the ADS first appeared the last decadal survey wrote: "NASA's initiative for the Astrophysics Data System has vastly increased the accessibility of the scientific literature for astronomers. NASA deserves credit for this…

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project investigates astronomical surveys spanning a time interval of 70 years, searching for unusual and exotic transients. We present herein the VASCO Citizen…

While an astronomer's job is typically to look out from Earth, the seriousness of the climate crisis has meant a shift in many astronomers' focus. Astronomers are starting to consider how our resource requirements may contribute to this…

The Commission Femmes et Astronomie of the French Astronomical Society, has conducted a statistical study aimed at mapping the current presence of women in French professional astronomy and establishing a baseline for tracking its evolution…

The impact of astronomical research carried out by different countries has been compared by analysing the 1000 most-cited astronomy papers published 1991-8 (125 from each year). 61% of the citations are to papers with first authors at…

Astronomy, of all the sciences, is possibly the one with the most public appeal across all age groups. This is also evidenced by the existence of a large number of planetaria and amateur astronomy societies, which is unique to the field.…

Conference attendance is fundamental for a successful career in astronomy. However, many factors limit such attendance in ways that can disproportionately affect women and minorities more. In this white paper, we present the results of a…