Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2005
Ian Robson, Lars Lindberg Christensen (eds.)
Pages 242-250

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"Catch the Stars in the Net!": Eight Years of Experience in Communicating Astronomy via New Technologies

Abstract:

The authors describe their work and experience gathered in the field of Public Outreach Education (POE) and Information in Astronomy over the last 8 years, mainly but not only, through the web. "Catch the stars in the Net!" is a long term project made up of many initiatives for nearly all types of possible users: young, students, amateurs, general public or the merely curious. All the initiatives are developed within a focus group on the framework for the particular field and then, after this experimental phase, are published and managed on the web. There are more than 33 astronomica independent websites in Italian on the project webserver; all of them are reachable from one "Web door" with the name "Prendi le Stelle nella Rete!" (Catch the Stars in the Net) at the url: www.lestelle.net. We have called it a "Web door" because it is neither a simple Home Page nor a Web Portal, but presents all the related websites in a well structured way to facilitate their use by the different types of user for different purposes. Half of the 33 websites are in English, and they are all reachable from the url: www.astro2000.org. The project was born from and has developed in parallel with emerging technologies: from the first website in 1997, to the weekly news bulletin in streaming audio/video in 2000, to the last project with wireless technology for an astrophysical mobile learning programme, supported by industry, undertaken this year at primary and middle schools.

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