The Social Astronomer

Amateur astronomy of the Solar System is living a golden age with major contributions to modern planetary science. These contributions cover a wide spectrum of topics that range from the discovery of impacts in Jupiter [1-2], to the observation of stellar occultations by minor bodies [3-4], the characterization of unexpected high-atmospheric events in Mars [5], or the characterization of giant storms on Jupiter [6] and Saturn [7-8]. Besides these examples of high-profile publications, there is an increasing number of amateur contributions to dozens of studies of planetary atmospheres and countless contributions to the study of minor bodies. While we focus here in the role of amateur astronomy observations of planetary atmospheres, we also recognize the varied and healthy professional and amateur collaborations in other areas of solar system astronomy.The reasons behind this golden age lie in the two sides of the collaboration: On the side of amateur astronomers, many of them use very efficient detectors and advanced software tools, and they are highly connected at an international level. Thus, they provide high-quality observations on a regular basis to professional astronomers, or have strong analysis teams like the JUPOS team as an example (http://jupos.privat.t-online.de/index.htm). These frequent amateur observations provide essential monitoring of the temporal evolution of planetary atmospheres. On the other side, professional astronomers are aware of the potential of these observations and actively seek the collaboration of amateur astronomers and citizen scientists. A key case in this regard is NASA’s Juno mission to the giant planet Jupiter, and its large-scale collaboration around the JunoCam instrument on the mission Juno website: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/. The mission has been recently extended until 2025 and details of the contribution of amateur observers to this new mission scenario are presented by Orton et al. in session ODAA5 in this meeting. Other examples of professionals seeking a global collaboration with amateurs are the various professional and amateur astronomy services and workshops organized by research projects like the Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (2016-2019) and Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (2020-2024).We anticipate that the trend of amateur astronomy playing an important role in providing additional data sets to space missions will continue to grow and we advocate for the early establishment of such collaborations.  We review some of the elements that have made the collaboration of amateur astronomers with the Juno mission so fruitful for both parties and how this collaboration has grown beyond Jupiter into enhanced collaborations in other fields through networking amateur astronomers and providing a successful example to other fields.We also discuss future ground-based high-resolution amateur observations of Solar System planets in support of future missions. These include the James Webb Space Telescope observations of planets (launch in October 2021), ESA’s Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE, launching in 2022) and NASA’s Europa Clipper missions to the Jupiter system in the early 2030s, the in situ exploration of Saturn’s moon Titan by the Dragonfly mission (NASA) in 2034, the Envision mission to Venus (if selected by ESA), and possible future missions to the Icy Giants Uranus and Neptune. Each of these ambitious missions will benefit from the strong partnership between amateur and professional planetary scientists. The first in this line is the JWST observations of Giant planets to be conducted in 2022 (see Fletcher et al. in session OPS3 in this conference).Finally, we also show some professional and amateur networking elements developed under the umbrella of the Europlanet projects, including the recently launched Europlanet Telescope Network (https://bit.ly/2Br5LDt), and we present possible scenarios for future pro-am collaborations beyond the end of the Europlanet 2024 project. AcknowledgementsPart of this research has been supported by Europlanet 2024 RI. Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.

The Pro-Am Collaborative Astronomy (PACA) Project 1.0, evolved from the successful NASA observational campaign CIOC to characterize Oort-cloud comet C/2012 S1(ISON) in 2013 on its initial passage through the inner solar system. With no spacecraft en route to comet ISON, many of NASA assets were utilised to characterize the comet. With the inclusion of amateur astronomers, educators, students, outreach coordinators and astronomy journalists; adaptation of various social media platforms and components of emerging field of citizen science, four phases for a successful pro-am collaboration were identified: (1) identification of a scientific knowledge gap; (2) integration of the pro-am communities; (3) adopt emerging technology and (4) stay in the limelight with results of the campaign. Several important results that emerged from the successful campaigns are: (i) establishment of a global network of astronomers that can be galvanized into action on short notice; (ii) provide an alert mechanism to all observers; (iii) immediate outreach and dissemination of results via our media/blogger members; (iv) provide a forum for discussions between the communities to help strategize the observing campaign for maximum benefit and (v) identify potential challenges on the data archival and its crowdsourcing. We will illustrate these concepts in detail for the first comet campaign, PACA_CIOC. We will also share some strategies for building successful pro-am campaigns, with examples from various PACA- and non-PACA campaigns, including NASA/CIOC campaigns; ESA/Rosetta mission to comet 67P; 2017 and 2019 Total Solar Eclipses (TSE) polarization experiments with citizen scientists; planetary oppositions of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in 2018 and other observing modes of polarization and spectroscopy now available to the amateur community. The evolution of Citizen Science in astronomy is intimately tied to professional-amateur collaboration (pro-am) observing campaigns. We will provide a framework from the set-up of the pro-am observing campaign to identifying challenges (such as data archival and its crowdsourcing) unique to each campaign. We will identify future opportunities for small aperture pro-am campaigns to include elements of citizen science (i) for engaging various audiences; and (ii) to include scientists and educators to provide guidance for the project and post-activity analysis of the data collected. The inclusion of educators from the start in defining such activities is vital for their success. Yet many scientists do not include educators till later in campaign. While some of this is mitigated by preparing a parallel outreach/citizen science program, the lack of scientists is highlighted by the lack of useable research results. Citizen science has evolved from a simple sort of data by engaging the public to iteratively cycling through the dimensions of a pro-am campaign (listed above). The PACA Observer comprises of a global network consisting of professional observers, individual amateur observers (solar, planetary, cometary), remote telescope networks and portable, mobile telescope networks.  We will share the various products delivered via the PACA Project and highlight several new PACA campaigns that will be instituted soon, including the return of comet 67P/C-G (target of the ESA/NASA Rosetta mission). The deliverables of the observational campaigns include long data sets of various planetary atmospheres (Jupiter, Saturn and Mars); upcoming total and annular solar eclipses; involvement of students and data scientists in all phases of data acquisition and analysis. All amateur observers are invited to join the new campaigns and participate in the upcoming PACA campaigns and the evolution of the next generation of citizen science projects with new tools like correlative analysis and virtual/augmented reality.  

Planets in a room (PIAR) is a DIY kit to build a small, lowcost spherical planet simulator and planetarium projector. Teachers, science communicators that run a small museum or planetarium, planetary scientists, amateur astronomers and other individuals can easily build it and use it on their own, to show and teach the Earth and other planets and to develop and share material with a growing online community. Having started in 2017 with a first version made using 3d-printed technology, PIAR has lately gone green, with a new wooden, plastic-free version of the kit. (http://www.planetsinaroom.net/)The project has been developed by the italian non-profit association Speak Science, with the collaboration of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and the Roma Tre University, Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica.It was funded by the Europlanet Outreach Funding Scheme in 2017 and was presented to the scientific community at EPSC and other scientific Congresses in the following years. Today, it is being distributed to an increasing number of schools, science museum and research institutions. PIAR is also one of the projects selected by the Europlanet Society for education and public outreach of planetary science: in 2020, it is being distributed to the 12 Europlanet Regional Hubs all around Europe, to be used in a number of educational projects.In this talk we will review the state of the art of the project presenting a selection of educational material and projects that have been developed for PIAR by scientists, teachers and communicators and that are focused on planetary science and on planetary habitability. AcknowledgementsWe acknowledge for this project the vast community of amateur and professionals that is actively working on innovative educational systems for astronomy such as planetarium and virtual reality projects (both hardware and software). Planets in a room is based on the work of this vast community of people and their experiences and results. We also acknowledge Europlanet for funding this work: the project Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.” ReferencesGiacomini L., Aloisi F., De Angelis I., “Planets in a room”, EPSC Abstracts Vol. 11, EPSC2017-280, 2017Giacomini L., Aloisi F., De Angelis I., Capretti S., “Planets in a Room: a DIY, low-cost educational kit”, EPSC Abstracts Vol. 12, EPSC2018-254, 2018Giacomini L., Aloisi F., De Angelis I., Capretti S., “Planets on (low-cost) balloons”, EPSC AbstractsVol. 13, EPSC-DPS2019-1243-1, 2019Giacomini L., Aloisi F., De Angelis I., Capretti S, “(Green) Planets in a Room”, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22153, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22153, 202

The climate crisis is here and the time for action is ticking away. Scientific evidence has repeatedly shown that humanity alone is responsible for the destructive changes happening to our climate. Likewise, the responsibility to address and curb global warming lies with us all. As astronomers, we have a unique opportunity to educate people on the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and urge those in power to take meaningful action. Astronomers for Planet Earth is a group of current and former professional astronomers, amateur astronomers, astronomy educators, and astronomy students from over 40 countries around the world. The organisation’s goal is to 1) provide astronomers interested in climate change with a community to discuss ideas; 2) provide the public with information about the climate crisis; and 3) provide the climate movement with an astronomical perspective.

‘Modern astronomy’ was introduced to Siam (present-day Thailand) (Siam officially changed its name to Thailand in 1939) when the Belgian Jesuit missionary-astronomer Father Antoine Thomas carried out stellar and lunar eclipse observations during 1681 and 1682 in order to determine the latitude and longitude of Ayutthaya. Three years later a contingent of French Jesuit missionary astronomers observed a total lunar eclipse from Lop Buri, which marked the start of an intensive two-and-a-half year period of observational activity at Lop Buri under the sponsorship of King Narai. During this interval, a partial solar eclipse and two further lunar eclipses were observed from a number of different observing sites. Although a substantial astronomical observatory was constructed in Lop Buri and this was used by French Jesuit missionary-astronomers, ‘modern astronomy’ ended suddenly in 1688 when King Narai died and most Western missionary-astronomers were expelled from Siam. ‘Modern astronomy’ only re-emerged in Siam after a hiatus of almost 200 years when another royal supporter of astronomy, King Rama IV, invited French astronomers to observe the total solar eclipse of 18 August 1868 from Siam, and his son, King Rama V, hosted British astronomers during the 6 April 1875 total solar eclipse. Thailand’s romance with total solar eclipses continued during the 9 May 1929 solar eclipse when King Rama VII visited British and German astronomers based near Siam’s southern border, and this was the catalyst required for the birth of home-grown ‘modern astronomy’. Soon after, Siam’s first astronomy classes began at Chulalongkorn University, and in 1944 this university hosted Siam’s first professional astronomer when Rawee Bhavilai, a solar specialist, joined the Physics Department. The latest phase in the professionalisation of astronomy occurred in 2009 when the Government approval the formation of the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT). In this paper we trace the critical roles that solar and lunar eclipses played in the emergence and final adoption of ‘modern astronomy’ in Thailand from 1682 through to the present day. (Less)

Chapter 8 - Amateur Astronomy: Engaging the Public in Astronomy Through Exploration, Outreach, and Research

In 1833, a massive display of the Leonid Meteor Storm over America caused its population panic and wonder over these fantastic, unknown ‘fireballs’. With so many eyewitnesses, the Storm provides an interesting account of how both professional and amateur astronomers at this time sought to communicate this phenomenon through language. All of these observers specifically utilize metaphorical language, which ultimately proves most viable in bridging the observational scientific characteristics of the event with the deep, emotional awe it inspires.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first look at the night sky through a telescope, was arguably the most successful public-outreach event in the history of science. Thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, public-information officers, writers, publishers, teachers, and informal educators from 148 countries worked tirelessly to share the wonders of astronomy with millions of people, from rural schoolchildren to the President of the United States. How to build on IYA2009 was the theme of “Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2010,” a conference held in Cape Town, South Africa, in March 2010. I report some of the highlights from CAP2010 and consider the extent to which the IYA2009 helped us address global challenges in astronomy communication.

A new model of astronomical observatory is presented, small and versatile, capable of satisfying the demands of professional and amateur astronomers: The PROAM Observatory. An auto-installing, low cost and easy to transport observatory has been designed, with light and resistant materials. It can house astronomical material, and auxiliary equipment in a reliable and safe way. It has a specific software, that allows us to control the observatory and to operate with all the equipment in remote or in automatic form.

Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement

Science centers and museums are currently experimenting to strengthen the participation of the public in two-way conversations between the public and the institution. Eventually, these activities will lead to a stronger role of the public in the decision-making process of the museum. We analyzed the current situation faced by science museums in Europe in light of the recent discourse on public engagement with science and identified the main barriers and obstacles that prevent actual decision making of the public within the institutions. Finally, we discuss suggestions for solutions.

Externalities and public goods revisited The causes of the market failures behind the decline in ecosystem services reported by the MA have already been identified. Chapter 5 paid special attention to the differences in the problem of externality at the national and international scales. At the national scale it was noted that the failure of market prices to signal the scarcity of environmental resources, and the failure of markets to supply public goods, are both problems that can be resolved by government action. The fact that national governments have sovereign power makes it possible to address market failures directly by allocating property rights and by extending the legal protection of species or habitats on private lands. It also makes it possible to develop nationally funded incentive schemes such as the US biodiversity offset and banking programs considered in some detail later in this chapter (Madsen, Carroll and Moore Brands 2010). It makes it possible to establish national agencies with responsibilities for the provision of environmental public goods such as habitat for rare and endangered species, clean water, environmental health protection, and so on. The fact that national governments have sovereign authority over the land and people within national jurisdiction means that they are able to cut the Gordian knot of open or ill-defined access. At the international level, however, both externalities and the supply of environmental public goods are altogether more difficult to address. There is no supranational sovereign authority capable of assigning property rights or levying the taxes needed to fund the provision of public goods.

ABSTRACTThe Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is a loose confederation of amateur and professional astronomers. We describe the design and construction of our Mark III system, a set of wide‐field drift‐scan CCD cameras which monitor the celestial equator down to 13th magnitude in several passbands. We explain the methods by which images are gathered, processed, and reduced into lists of stellar positions and magnitudes. Over the period 1996 October to 1998 November, we compiled a large database of photometric measurements. One of our results is the tenxcat catalog, which contains measurements on the standard Johnson‐Cousins system for 367,241 stars; it contains links to the light curves of these stars as well.

The capability to caracterize small bodies by stellar occultations has expanded enormously thanks to the Gaia mission, whose accurate astrometry has improved by order of magnitude the accuracy of star positions and proper motions, and asteroid orbits. More and more occultations by minor planets as small as 5-10~km in the Main Belt are reported by observers often equipped with mobile telescopes of modest size. Appropriate techniques to recover the absolute timing of the observed events and software tools that are now widely available permit to recover asteroid astrometry (relative to the star positions) with accuracies comparable to Gaia, especially at the smallest asteroid sizes.After some successful observations of occultations by Near Earth Asteroids such as Phaethon and Apophis, we took the challenge to push the limit at smaller sub-km NEAs. Several months before the impact by the DART probe on Dimorphos, satellite of (65803) Didymos, we established a networking activity of collaboration among amateur and professional astronomers, named ACROSS (Asteroid Collaborative Research via Occultation Systematic Survey), initially supported by the European Space Agency.One of the primary goals of ACROSS is to obtain very accurate astrometry over a few years, in order to evaluate the effect of the (September 2022) DART impact on the heliocentric orbit of Didymos. However, just a few months before the DART arrival to the target the uncertainty in the ephemeris was more than an order of magnitude larger than the size of Didymos, making predictions and telescope deployment practically not feasible.After a long work of astrometric reduction of available CCD images collected during the DART/Hera ground-based campaign (fully exploited for photometry but not for astrometry) and careful weighting of the observations, we were able to gradually converge to an exploitable orbit accuracy very close to the date of the impact. Following several failed attempts, the first successful event was observed just after the DART impact.This positive detection was followed by several others (19 in total), over 6 months, providing an astrometric accuracy comparable to the DART telemetry. At the end of the campaign astrometry by occultations was able to constrain the orbit at the same level as the use of the DART telemetry.However, the success of the observations was also enhanced by the detection in 4 events of occultations by the satellite Dimorphos. While their contribution to our knowledge about the position of Dimorphos along its orbit is not major at this stage, we found that the occultation signal, modulated by diffraction effects, can provide relevant information about its size and shape.The new ongoing campaign of stellar occultation in 2024 can thus provide an important contribution not only to constraint the dynamical properties of the Didymos system, but also to understand the post-impact properties of Dimorphos, before the arrival of Hera, including its shape. A first occultation in May 2024 proved the high quality of the orbit, resulting in the first positive of the new sequence. In this talk, we will discuss the results obtained in 2023 and present some preliminary results from the ongoing 2024 campaign.

Meetings can be the bane of a working life – but they can also be its lifeblood. The latter are the ones where you meet up with old colleagues and find new ones, where a chance remark starts off a new train of thought, or where you find a useful new tool, method or whole discipline. All these types of meetings feature in this issue, from the small groups of amateur and professional astronomers, through a focused discussion meeting of deep Earth specialists, to the major international meeting that was the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire – notable for the buzz of enthusiasm running through the week. There’s a common thread to these groupings. They all involve specialists getting together and learning more. Whether it is amateur and professional observers working together to their mutual benefit, or mineral physicists, chemists and seismologists using different tools to understand the same obscure place, they share a purpose, and that’s to understand more about the natural world. The best way forward is generally agreed to be specialist working with specialist – the future is multidisciplinary. And if Science Minister Lord Drayson is to be believed, this is also a way to succeed in gaining research funding from an increasingly hard-up government and ultraefficient research councils. So it was indeed a coup to have the Minister speak at the EWASS meeting, and spend a surprising amount of time looking round at one of the most exciting, enjoyable and effective meetings this year. I just hope he noticed. Editorial NEws