The Universe to Youths

<< Background >>Our discoveries are on the cover page of media showing high interest in astronomy. Astronomy searches for answers to the most intriguing questions: how the Universe and our planet were formed? What is the fate of our Universe? Is there any life form out there? EU Horizon program recognizes this in its Digital, Industry and Space section. Promotion of astronomy & space research expresses this need of the society and policy makers.There is a technology transfer from astronomy to industry. Astronomy is the best tool to attract the attention of the youth for science.Astronomy is not part of the curriculum in many secondary schools. The night sky is light-polluted everywhere in European cities not giving a chance to see the starry night. Only theoretical astrophysics can be taught in schools..Learning by practice is one of the best teaching methods. This needs events organized far from light-polluted cities. From there, it is possible to show the wonders of the Universe. The view of the outer Universe from these special places will make a life-long experience for the youth, making them supporters of protection of our environment on the Earth and friends of science. Their interest will be oriented into science and engineering<< Objectives >>We wanted to significantly increase the level of international collaboration in transfer of knowledge, skills and know-how in science education and popularization. We wanted to achieve a library of talks, slides and videos that shows the methods, techniques and practices of the science education and popularization of astronomy at different platforms: media, social media, Internet, sidewalk astronomy, schools. We also wanted to achieve that the interest in astronomy is increased among the youth. We hope that several of them will choose a career in science, especially in astronomy, astrophysics or space engineering. We also expect that the interest in astronomy and, in general, in science, will be solid and enduring because of the impressions received in our camps and observing weekend workshops.We wanted to strengthen the skills necessary in the research fields of STEM.In summary, the main achievement we aimed at was to contribute to reach the goal of EU via our events: 'Making science attractive to young children is one of the priorities of the EU.'<< Implementation >>In the proposal we described that our activity will mostly mean activities related to the exchange methodology with telescopes under dark skies and starry night observations. We also discussed how we could organize and improve these out-of-class activities. This is because this offered the opportunity to learn by practice and eventually leads to the mastering of skills. That also helped to improve the general astronomical and astrophysical knowledge of the students as well as to improve their skills for their future career. In addition, this provided the closest possible contact with the Universe. This is similar to the following: one can learn more about forests via a well-organized out-of-class activity in the wilderness after the theoretical introduction in the classroom. Without supplementing the traditional ways of teaching by out-of-class activities, the level of education is significantly defective. As we summarized in the application, such out-of-class astronomical activities are usually not implemented in curricula of the different countries, only amateur astronomical associations provide these.Therefore, we planned the followings for these two-years project:(1) Transnational Project Meetings in form of Observing Weekends.(2) Virtual Astronomy Club.(3) Sidewalk Astronomy Events.(4) Media Apperances.(1) Transnational Project Meetings in form of Observing Weekends. The night program included the usage of telescopes to observe the celestial objects as well as to draw them and to photograph them. We focused on learning new techniques, e.g. using modern cameras for astrophotography. These regular meetings helped to keep the level of interest high. They also helped us to better monitor how the interest and level of skills evolved during the project. The daytime program consisted of talks and practical exercises. Issues related to science education and astronomical popularization in and out of the schools were discussed.We organized a kick-off meeting via Zoom on 2 April 2022 where the team leaders and project managers (Norbert Steinkellner, Zoltán Makó, Attila Jandó, Szilárd Csizmadia) discussed the management, administration and organizational issues of the project.The first in-person meeting (Austria, May 2022) started with an introduction of the participants and getting to know each other from the different countries. Therefore, after an excursion, the three teams presented their introductionary slides. Then, we heard a talk about the Zselic Dark Sky Park and Public Observatory. Mr Schmall and Mr F. Vámosi presented their skills and abilities as well as their methods and experiences on how they promote science for every age group. After that Mr Steinkellner presented how astronomy and astrophysics are taught in Austrian schools and what kind of improvements he introduced in his own classes. In the afternoon a social event was organized to form closer friendships, therefore we made an excursion. In the evening we learned from Mr Pölzl and Mr Steinkellner about how to measure the analemma (the yearly motion of the Sun on the sky) with simple tools and how these can be used in the classes to teach the stellar motions and the physics behind it. Mr Tamási presented the Transsylvanian participants, activities and experiences of their public and school events while Mr Császár introduced us to the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics, which is the highest level international competion in our field for secondary school students. He also presented how the Hungarian team prepares itself for the yearly competition. Finally, Mr Kelemen presented the activity and public outreach experiences of the Szeged Observatory. The conclusion of the day was that the average level of the astronomical, astrophysical and space knowledge is low in all countries. They are not representing what is needed contemporarily in the society. There is high interest from the public to learn more, and the schools must revolutionize their astronomy, astrophysics and space curricula because it is extremely outdated.The second meeting (Austria, September 2022) has seen more school teachers than any other TPM, they formed a majority of the participants. We started with a discussion of the current breakthroughs in exoplanet science, and the search for signs of extraterrestrial life to answer the most intruguing astronomical questions (by Dr Csizmadia). We summarized how to deal with these hard and provocative questions in the school classes and/or in public events. Then, we watched the canadian film ’Clara’ which is about an astronomer looking for alien life and exoplanets, and we discussed its reality and how films can be used for upping interest in science. On the second day, we heard the very interesting talk of Mr Ansari about the online tool of the European Space Agency which can be used for teaching and popularizing astronomy in classes, too. This was a new, very modern, useful tool for school teachers. Then the young, secondary school student Mr Mulle from BRG Kepler presented his research on space rockets as fascinating technology: we received useful feedback on what kind of interest and (deep!) understanding of the best students have regarding space industry. In the afternoon we had two parallel workshops and the participants could choose which one they wanted to attend. One workshop was about astrophotography where the very experienced astrophotographers (Mr F. Vámosi, Mr Ágoston and Mr Mezei) taught the image process step-by-step from planning an astroimage to the end product. In the other workshop, Ms Fröhlich, Ms Biró and Mr Nagy introduced the participants to astronomical drawing. Both techniques are the basics of recording the view seen in an astronomical telescope and serve as the starting point of the later interpretation of the observations in the classroom or at home. Just like if somebody collects plants, flowers, leafs in the forest during the out-of-class activity and he/she classifies and analyzes them later under a microscope, etc. As is known from pedagogy, the understanding is highly helped by multichannel perception, if the student makes his/her own drawings, own photos and thus takes care for details, and not just looking at a picture in a textbook for a second.We also heard the experiences of Ms Király, who manages a ~25 000 member facebook group, and the presentation of Ms Horváth who is one of the managers of the Instagram-page of the Vega Astronomical Association. They shared their experience, successes and failures on how to use social media to promote, share, popularize and teach astronomy and science.Mr Puskás from Romania covered the experiences of the Transsylvanian community in astronomy popularization. Mr Jandó from Hungary presented our participation in a one week long astronomical science popularizing event which attracted many tens of thousands of visitors. He presented how to organize good public sidewalk astronomy events in practice. Mr Pfragner from Austria talked about how one can overcome environmental pollution (especially smog and light pollution of cities) when one performs astronomical imaging from cities. From those polluted cities, there is little chance to have a good view of the starry night. Therefore, it is necessary to apply the basic principle of ’inclusive pedagogy’: everyone has the same chance to get the same educational experience under clear nights, far from these cities.Ms Biró presented how fireballs, meteors, and falling/shooting stars can attractively be used for science popularization, while Mr Pühringer from Salzburg showed a case study of how a secondary school student can carry out from beginning to end a high-level, high-quality astrophysical research, and how he can get help from professional astronomers and time to work with big radio telescopes. Such knowledge, contact points and ideas can be used by other teachers and science educators to initiate future student reasearch projects. After this, we informally summarized our progress in the project.The third project meeting (Austria, April 2022) was more practice-oriented. This event was moved from Hungary to Austria because the previous TPM had extreme bad weather condistions and we were not able to collect eneough material during nights. We needed one more occassion under high quality skies. With the lead of the VAA-member Mr Hegyi (Széchenyi University and Hegyhát Astronomical Foundation) we measured the diamater of the Earth with very cheap equipment, utilizing the basic knowledge of astronomy of the ancient Greeks. Our result differs from the modern values by less than 0.3%! This simple measurement can be carried out by any two elementary or secondary schools in the future based on the material provided by Mr Hegyi. The proposed minimum distance between the two schools is about 200 km – the bigger the distance, the more precise the measurement. In this way, even children can measure the diameter of the spherical Earth by themselves (and they can make connections to other domestic or abroad schools) with a simple equipment. A talk was presented by Mr Hegyi to introduce to this measurement and school experiment, then in the next two afternoons we performed the experiment twice (in order to practisize).In addition, we heard a talk about the PLATO mission, the future of an important field of astronomical research, by Dr Csizmadia; an intriguing talk about how to teach the structure of the Universe, and another talk about inclusive pedagogy in astronomical and astrophysical teaching and science popularization were also presented by him, too. Mr Balda was talking about how to contsruct an observatory which meant useful information for the teachers and association leaders who planned to build future observatories as school laboratories to study the cosmos via astronomical telescopes. Ms Simon-Zsók and Mr Czimbalmos has shown how self-written tales can be used as performances in any school theater or similar events to promote science, especially astronomy; they presented their own tale which described the story of two children (a girl and a boy) who discovered the starry night's wonders as they left the light polluted cities and went to dark, clear and clean Transylvanian nights. This can give many ideas to the teachers and science educators on how to improve the variety of techniques and science communication.Mr Pfragner gave advice and presented techniques on how to show solar eclipses to the public and school kids – in average, every few years we have a chance to see a partial solar eclipse from any town, and it can be (it must be!) used as an astronomical event to promote science and to teach how the Solar System works. Mr Lampl, a secondary school student at that time, showed a lot of self-developed, self-made cheap technical solutions to improve the performance of telescopes and how to transport them in a safe way. This latter one can save money for schools and associations, e.g. there is no need to rent big vans for the telescope transportation.In addition, we also had a second astrophotography workshop because many participants were interested to learn more details; it was led again by Mr F. Vámosi.The first presentation of the last project meeting (August 2023, Hungary) was the so-called “Space-time roaming”. This was an astronomical competition for 9-10 year-old elementary school students. The talk was about: invoking the younger age-groups; sharing of experiences and inclusive pedagogical experiences in some Vas and Zala county schools by Mr Jandó, Mr Bárány, Mrs Csáki and Mr Bánfalvi. They covered the experiences of 2 active and 1 retired physics teachers and an electric engineer who is a voluntary science educator. Then Mr Juhász talked about the renovation of a 50 cm telescope, giving a lot of ideas on how to save old telescopes for modern teaching and popularization purposes.Mr Balázs talked about his initiative and experiences on how to organize astronomical teaching and popularization events in some kindergardens in his home town (Dabas, Hungary).In the afternoon we made an excursion to the Gothard Astrophysical Observatory of the Eötvös University at Szombathely. We visited the observatory and its 60 cm telescope, which is for public lectures, and the 84 cm telescope serving the scientific work. We also visited the Eugene Gothard Exhibition in the Observatory. With the professors, staff members and PhD students of the Observatory, we informally discussed the experience of holding public events, sidewalk astronomy events, publicizations, career and study opportunities on space research, astronomy and astrophysics. After that we visited the Hegyhátsál Observatory maintained by the Hegyhát Observatory Foundation, and discussed the same topics with them. Mr Ágoston presented a talk entitled: Astrophoto-expedition in Namibia. Astrophotos are the key elements of the attraction of the attention of people, including students, and to orient them to science via the beauty of Universe. The astrophotos exhibit this beauty. They are also key elements of school study circles because it makes it easier to catch the attention of the kids and to explain the physics of the Universe.The next day started by Mr Koncz (MSc student in astrophysics) talking about how to explain the history of Universe to the public and the secondary school students. He was followed by Mr Steinkellner, a teacher in physics and religion of the Kepler Bundesrealgymnasium in Graz, Austria, who talked about common fallacies in astronomy which can lead to misconceptions in the heads of the students if we do not teach them correctly. Mr L. Vámosi, a teacher in chemistry and director of the Táncsics Gymnasium at Kaposvár, Hungary showed astrochemistry experiments and how to use them to teach chemistry via astronomy. Chemistry is not the most popular discipline in the schools and in the society, but its importance in the modern world and modern industry cannot be denied. Via astronomy, chemistry can be made more interesting for the students.The meeting was open for students, teachers, amateur astronomers outside from the project. Therefore we made an experiment and organized an astronomical competion to everyone on the last day via the page Kahoot!. We were surprised how much the prticipants learned in these few days of the meetings. This shows that concentrated, focused short events as out-of-class activity can be very efficient in astronomy teaching.The talk by Mr F. Vámosi about his Astro Pi challange was really amazing for the audience. As a student of the Táncsics Gymnasium, he planned and build an experimental camera which was selected by the Europe Space Agency to use it on the International Space Station. It is operating there for 7 years. He showed how this call of ESA could be used for teaching space trough real experiments on the ISS and encouraged every student and physics teacher to participate in such calls of ESA.Finally, we were introduced to the world of exoplanets, a leading astronomical discipline, by Dr. Kristine Wei Fun Lam (German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin), and career opportunities were discussed with her after her talk. Additionaly, we had the chance to organize an interactive meeting among academics, amateur astronomers and students.We think that it was very useful that four times the young generations as well as the volunteers could meet with professional astronomers who are working in the forefront of the astronomical researches and teaching of astronomy, and a lot of ideas, methods, inspirations were exchanged.(2) Virtual Astronomy Club (VAC). The VAC means a youtube broadcasted lecture series. We planned 10 occassions during the project time but we made several more as follows. All talks are available via youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeNxi-TyRAb6ZiraPkvGSPdKXqqgQnBfd), where we uploaded several earlier ones, too. List of the VAC-talks presented during the project:(Note that English subtitles can be switched on):2022. 03. 21.: Világos Blanka: A nehéz elemek keletkezése – 9900 viewers2022. 04. 25.: Dr. Barna Barnabás: Sokféle szupernóva-robbanás – 5400 viewers2022. 06. 27.: Dr. Csizmadia Szilárd: A Naprendszeren túli világ felfedezése – 7600 viewers2022. 10. 10.: Dr. Csizmadia Szilárd: A csillagok alakja – 1100 viewers2022. 11. 14.: Hegyi Norbert: Eratoszthenész ókori mérése a 21. században megismételve – 1500 viewers2022. 12. 21. Bánfalvi Péter: Hallo Hold, itt az Orion űrhajó! - 1900 viewers2023. 03. 06.: Bánfalvi Péter: A 2023. év csillagászati látnivalói – 552 viewers2023. 04. 29.: Dr. Csizmadia Szilárd: A csillagászat és az asztrofizika 21. századi forradalma – 1300 viewers – 812 viewers2023. 05. 22.: Dr. Csizmadia Szilárd: Bolygóvédelem, kozmikus fenyegetettségünk – 3100 viewers2023. 05. 28.: Dr. Hegedüs Tibor: A planetáriumok története egy jeles évforduló kapcsán – 812 viewers2023. 06. 06.: Kérdezd meg a csillagászt! - interaktív kérdezz-felelek youtube élő adás – 1100 viewers2023. 12. 18.: Bánfalvi Péter: A 2024. év csillagászati látnivalói – 883 viewers2024. 02. 26. Hegyi Norbert: Napórákkal a laposföldhívók ellen – 792 viewersSee the attached photos of youtube visitor numbers.(3) Sidewalk Astronomy Events.58 sidewalk astronomy events were held by the three participating organizations with 3092 visitors (only in-person events.) See the attached excel-sheet for the list of these events.We note that we estimated in the application that about 5000 participants are expected to the online and the in-person multiplication events. In total, we had nearly 36 000 visitors of the online events and nearly 3100 in-person attandees, about 8 times more that we expected.(4) Media apperances. See at the dissemination part.<< Results >>We achieved all objectives which were concrete outputs of the project. We had more online visitors by about 8 times than what we expected for the Virtual Astronomy Club talks and we published two books instead of one we planned.So, we published two electronic books as part of the concrete results. The first one is: Tamás Horváth – György Varga: Visual Messier Guide. This book is available online on our website: http://vcse.hu/download/11620/?tmstv=1713984689. This can be used for planning and assisting the teachers’ work at night observations.We also edited a second booklet by Mrs Fröhlich and Dr Csizmadia entitled: ’The Universe to Youths’, available at: … . These booklets contain the astrophotos we made during the transnational project meetings, a comprehensive description of these photos and the objects that are visible on them. These can be used as teaching materials in the classes and a good guider for the teachers to orient the student's attention to astronomy, astrophysics and space. It also contains a chapter about how make drawings next to telescope and how to improve their quality.Both books can be downloaded for free from the aforementioed pages and from EPRP to where we uploaded them. We also registered to the etwinning-system.We had several talks which gives examples, advises and guides how to to do popularization and night activities in astronomy and astrophysics. We also presented techniques and methodlogies how to prepare and improve the tools used for the out-of-class or in-class activities (e.g.: night observations, modern software toools, what to tecah about exoplanets, what fallacys and misunderstandings can be present in astronomy teaching etc). These slides and zoom-recordings are available for free at the www.vcse.hu/erasmus_plus_2022_2024 webpage.We also made the records of the Virtual Astronomy Club series public at youtube and it is a concrete output and result of the project. It was and it can be continuously used for popularizing astronomy, as taking information and pictures, animation, ideas for in-class teaching as well as it is a golden mine for detaild astronomical information. We also added a video to the aforementioned list how to illustrate the physical properties (sizes, distances, weights) of the Solar System and every school teacher can design his/her own experiment for very cheap based on this instruction-video.We also uploaded a video which contained interviews with three participants.