ABOUT
About us
IAU Commission C2 is a think/do-tank that convenes the astronomy communication community and seeds initiatives to explore new ways to communicate astronomy with the public.
It works in close collaboration with IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO) ,Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) and the Office for Astronomy Education (OAE).
What is our mission?
Our primary mission is to advance the profession of astronomy communication and support professionals. Our mission has several directions:
- Formalisation To endorse standards, best practices and requirements for public communication.
- Professionalisation To encourage and enable a much larger fraction of the astronomical community to take an active role in explaining what we do (and why) to our fellow citizens.
- Recognition Act as an international, impartial coordinating entity that furthers the recognition of outreach and public communication on all levels in astronomy.
- Collaboration To encourage international collaborations on outreach and public communication.
We support the overall IAU mission by supporting communicators of astronomy worldwide. Specifically, we support the OAO with the following:
- Our members contribute to the review of CAP journal, a free peer-reviewed journal for astronomy communicators that was born out of C2 and moved to the OAO https://www.capjournal.org/
- Our members support the Meet the IAU Astronomers! Programme of the OAO
- C2 has representatives in the OAO advisory board
Who do we work for?
Our primary target audience are professional or amateur communicators of astronomy.
While the IAU OAO focuses primarily on engaging the public, IAU C2 focuses primarily on engaging astronomy communicators.
Commission Working Groups
Commission C2 WG CAP Conferences
Inter-Commission C1-C2-C3-C4 WG Astronomy in Culture (WGAC)
Commission C2 WG Communicating climate change through astronomy
Organizing Committee
Oana Sandu (Barbulete) (President)
Sylvie D. Vauclair (Vice-President)
Vinicius de Abreu Oliveira (Secretary)
Richard Tresch Fienberg (Advisor – Past President)
Marieke Baan
Caterina Boccato
Nathalie Brouillet
Sze-leung CHEUNG
Carolina Johanna Odman
Kingsley C. Okpala
Ex-officio members
Lina Canas, OAO representative
Lucia Marchetti, IPS liaison
Kaoru Kimura, IPS President