Two important strategies on astronomy education in the era of digital transformation proposed on this presentation are the uses of “Astronomy Literacy” and a “Deep Learning” through “Data Intensive Astronomy” to support astronomy education.

Astronomy literacy can create several thinking skills to young generation and public for promoting human capacity buildings on science and technology.

Nowadays, the astronomical data archives are impressively large and the “digital age” has made it easy to make the data available to astronomers, researchers, under graduate and graduate students and even to publics. Big data in astronomy has then played an important role in astronomy education both in higher education and school education. Astronomers and researchers can access “big data” for the deep learning through data intensive astronomy on their research works and school students and publics.

We hope to extend these strategies through regional and inter-regional collaboration to promote astronomy education in wider scale.

Astronomy is connected with the every day experiences of the people, since the observation of simple and repetitive phenomena, as the succesion of days and nights, untill events of high impact, as the total solar eclipses. In this sense, the Astronomy is a fascinating activity and can be used to inspire interest in sciences in general. In this contribution, we introduce the Network of Astronmy School Education as part of the IAU proposals connected with teaching training programs, and we highlight several examples on the specific topic of the eclipses: their importance and connection with the culture, that can capture students attention if we use the workshops as part of the classes.

Traditional visual aids used in astronomy outreach (such as 2D telescope images) can fail to effectively convey complex and abstract ideas to lay audiences. With the advent of impressive CGI images widely available in film and other media, these aids may also not meet their expectations or visually engage people. To address this, we have been employing 3D holograms in lieu of 2D images for astronomy-based outreach activities both in-person (pre-pandemic), and virtually since the start of the pandemic. Here we demonstrate how the reader can make and incorporate holograms in their own virtual talks (no budget required) and present the feedback we’ve received so far.

We shall present with examples how analysis of astronomy data can be used for an educational purpose to train users in methods of data analysis, statistics, programming skills and research problems. Special reference will be made to our IAU-OAD project ‘Astronomy from Archival Data’ where we are in the process of building a repository of instructional videos and reading material for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as interested participants. Virtual Observatory tools will also be discussed and applied. As this is an ongoing project, by the time of the conference we will have the projects and work done by students included in our presentation. The material produced can be freely used by the community.

Astronomy education is an efficient means of attracting more people to study science and not just astronomy. The diversity in the majors of the students allows us to expand the knowledge of astronomy to all fields. In this paper, we present our non-traditional method of using real data and observations for our College and University classes, it allows students to learn about the applications and how to use them to study the stars.

I present three examples of IBSE (Inquiry-Based Science Education) type activities for students and teachers using data and resources from the Faulkes Telescope Project and the National Schools’ Observatory. Both projects have recently celebrated their 15th anniversary and both provide free access via the internet to 2-metre robotic telescopes to educational users throughout the World. Each activity contains supporting material and sample datasets in several aspects of astronomy as well as instructions on how to analyse data. These activities are designed to be ‘teacher-free’, extended projects for students.

They include the study of open clusters via astronomical images and population studies of exoplanets. I also present a Citizen Science project using data from Type Ia supernovae as discovered by the Gaia Alerts consortium. These data allow citizen scientists to develop their own Hubble Plot and begin to understand the link between Type Ia supernovae and the age of the Universe.

In this article we describe the recent history of astronomy in South Africa from the perspective of development. We describe how all major astronomy initiatives have carried a component of development with them, be it capacity building or socio-economic development. We highlight some activities and conclude that South Africa’s coherent and ambitious strategy has led to substantial changes in the astronomy research community in South Africa and that the young astronomers now starting their careers are taking possession of a bright future.

Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in occident), extensively studied the camera obscura phenomenon in the early 11th century. This instrument was used to obtain the projected image of a landscape on the screen and also was addopte by the scientists and famous painters along the centuries, to experiment with it until their final evolution as the modern photografic camera. The resource in the simple version of the “pinhole camera” can be used at the classroom to experience several phenomena, such us solar eclipses and Moon phases, and to each about optics and geometry. This contribution presents an application of this ingeniuos tool in the framework of solar eclipses, where the scale models are important to understand what really happens with the Sun-Earth-Moon system.

The communication project “Herschel and the invisible end of the rainbow” features the year 1800 discovery and today’s application of infrared radiation through diverse methods and different media in order to reach a wide audience. The discovery of the sun’s infrared radiation by the Herschels is demonstrated in a creative way through the publication and performance of a theatre play and accompanying audio play. The documentation of the historical discovery, which changed both science and our daily life, is further supplemented by background information e.g. on the role of women in science in the late 18th and early 19th century. By this, the history of the discovery of infrared radiation becomes alive and easily comprehensible. Additionally, we carry out interactive experiments and demonstrations using a capable thermal infrared camera by which a mostly unknown and strange infrared world becomes visible for all generations. Our recent findings with the infrared space telescope Herschel are used to exemplify modern science use. With this colourful, diverse and interactive communication concept, which is easily extendable and adaptable, we already took part in several science festivals, workshops and training events.

On the occasion of celebration of moon landing (2019) we designed a set of educational activities for the youngest, based on the moon. We wanted to talk, play and engage young people reflecting and enjoying different points of view and demystifying the idea of science and scientists in a personal and meaningful journey. After this year of experimentation we also engaged with public schools co-designing and tailoring those activities despite the current sanitarian crisis. We will describe a physical artifact called ‘Lunatario’ and its 3d printable version together with cross-disciplinary educational activities and our tentative documentation. We will also describe how, with the help of a very diverse team, we embedded other media in our moon exploration working in particular with picture books and animation. We believe this is a great way to deeply engage young people with STEAM in a democratic way.

The language we speak, the culture in which we grew up and where we come from have a tremendous impact on the way we learn astronomy. Additionally, the historical predominance of Western culture has influenced the way our modern society sees the world, and of course, the sky. In this work, we will share author’s experience working as science advisor in an outreach institution, where he explored different strategies to reach diverse communities and bring astronomy closer to broader audiences.

Even though the construction of world-renowned astronomical observatories in Chile has boosted the interest in astronomy on the community, many challenges have not yet been addressed. One of them is to raise awareness about the ancestral heritage of Chilean’s first nations. Finally, we would like to highlight the importance of learning astronomy in our own language and therefore assure inclusion, diversity, and equity in our countries.

Astronomy education and public outreach (EPO) is one of the important part of the future development of astronomy. During the past few years, as the rapid evolution of Internet and the continuous change of policy, the breeding environment of science EPO keep improving and the number of related projects show a booming trend. EPO is no longer just a matter of to teachers and science educators but also attracted the attention of professional astronomers. Among all activates of astronomy EPO, the data driven astronomy education and public outreach (abbreviated as DAEPO) is special and important. It benefits from the development of Big Data and Internet technology and is full of flexibility and diversity. We will present the history, definition, best practices and prospective development of DAEPO for better understanding this active field.

The original design of the IAUS367 included the development of a Workshop, thought to be a face-to-face instance, in order to interact with teachers and researchers, and to discuss the design, the theoretical foundations and the use of some didactic devices to observe and record the state of illumination and shadows casting variations on different objects, natural or artificial, through time, and its interpretation from a local, topocentric perspective, together with a global, planetary perspective. The pandemic forced us to convert this activity in a virtual one, which was very interesting anyway, with the participation of colleagues from different countries and with great theoretical wealth in the discussions. The Workshop lasted 2 hours, in Spanish language. We present here the initial proposal and a summary of what was discussed. (The complete video register can be accessed in the YouTube channel of IAUS367).

We review Big Data in Astronomy and its role in Astronomy Education. At present all-sky and large-area astronomical surveys and their catalogued data span over the whole range of electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma-ray to radio, as well as most important surveys giving optical images, proper motions, variability and spectroscopic data. Most important astronomical databases and archives are presented as well. They are powerful sources for many-sided efficient research using the Virtual Observatory (VO) environment. It is shown that using and analysis of Big Data accumulated in astronomy lead to many new discoveries. Using these data gives a significant advantage for Astronomy Education due to its attractiveness and due to big interest of young generation to computer science and technologies. The Computer Science itself benefits from data coming from the Universe and a new interdisciplinary science Astroinformatics has been created to manage these data.

The Universe is full of galaxies of various shapes; some galaxies have spiral arms and others don’t. Why do galaxies show such diversity? How were galaxies formed and evolved? Galaxies are thought to grow by interacting and merging with other galaxies, and the galaxy mergers may be the key process creating the variety. GALAXY CRUISE is the first citizen science project conducted by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) to unlock galaxies’ secrets using the big observational data. We made the superior quality big data taken by the Subaru Telescope accessible to the public and invited them to participate in data classification. Here we report how we designed the website and its first-year progress.

The European Exoplanets-A project aims to provide a comprehensive view of the nature of exoplanet atmospheres, through an interdisciplinary approach.

Exoplanets-A includes a knowledge server where we provide the scientific results and educational resources gathered and developed during the project. In this proceedings, we present two such educational resources: a MOOC and an augmented reality application.

Open Astronomy is an important and valuable goal, including the availability of refereed science papers and user-friendly public astronomy data archives. The latter allow and encourage interested researchers from around the world to visualise, analyse and possibly download data from many different science and frequency domains. With the enormous growth of data volumes and complexity, open archives are essential to explore ideas and make discoveries. Open source software is equally important for many reasons, including reproducibility and collaboration. I will present examples of open archive and software tools, including the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA), the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS), the 3D Source Finding Application (SoFiA) and the Busy Function (BF). Astronomy is international and includes or links to an incredibly wide range of sciences, computing, engineering, and education. Its open nature can serve as an example for world-wide interdisciplinary collaborations.

In the past, Western academic astronomy has conceived in a very specific way its interests. However, in recent decades there has been a promising openness to the rest of the society, in the context of areas such as education, heritage and outreach. Despite this, there has not been an adequate scientific approach to do it, which would imply taking into account the social sciences and a truly interdisciplinary perspective. Here we want to develop the idea that this interdisciplinary approach already exists and it is called: Cultural Astronomy. Unfortunately, in the context of academic astronomy it has been only seen as a study of the “astronomies of others”, intended as previous stages or failed attempts of Western academic astronomy. We will seek to show that Cultural Astronomy, as a critical reflection on the social character of the astronomical knowledge, is key to the success of these opening efforts.

When we talk about Astronomy, we normally do not take into account that we are using a cultural specific way of understanding the sky. Astronomers, either professional, amateur or just lovers of the sky nowadays tend to approach the sky from the point of view of modern science. There, we approach the sky as something that needs to be explored, understood and explained.

However, this vision was not always like that, or even in other cultures is/was completely different. For centuries, the human being has comprehended the sky, its changes and constancies, as part of their world, as part of the environment, as part of their everyday life.

In this paper, I review a few of these different ways of approaching the sky in several cultures, from the Near East to Rome or the Andes and how we can use them today for education, outreach and heritage management.

Astronomical observations have been documented in pre-Hispanic cultures. However, little is known about the astronomical heritage of pre-Hispanic societies in Venezuela, since there are no evidence of an ancestral material culture as other regions of Meso and South America, and these native Venezuelan groups lacked a written, alphabetic or ideographic language. There are innumerable petroglyph deposits in almost all regions of Venezuela, especially near Lake Valencia (Carabobo state) and those of the Andean foothills (Barinas state). By means of computerized simulation and archaeoastronomy techniques, the occurrence of a total solar eclipse is verified: in July 1, 577 at the Vigirima site; and another total solar eclipse at noon on May 16, 1398 at the Bum Bum site. It is concluded that the contemplation of the total eclipses of the Sun, must lead to the need for communication and recording, and lacking any type of writing, they drew the phenomenon, using the techniques and means at their disposal: engraving on rocks.