Astronomy has greatly progressed in this decade. The number of people who are interested in astronomical phenomena is certainly increasing as the number of IAU members increases. These people are divided into several categories, depending on their degrees of interests. For Japan, these are as follows:

The situation is changed when some such special event, such as a return of Halley’s comet, occurs. We can say that our present target in teaching astronomy is to increase the number of people in each category except the last one.