Annual Report 2011 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

Whereas scientific exchange in its usual incarnation,
as meetings and conferences, is contingent on the use
of our new building and will come into its own starting
in 2012, our outreach and educational activities in 2011
were many and manifold.
In the area of outreach, we continue to combine „classic“
astronomical PR, online outreach and public events.
In particular, we continued our work as German node of
the eso Science Outreach Network, where our contributions
include German translations of all eso press releases
(Liefke / Pössel) and, this year, support of the Open
Day at eso headquarters in Garching (Liefke). As far as
public events go, our highlight was once more the Klaus
Tschira Foundation’s five-day family science festival
“Explore Science” in May (with a total of 55 000 visitors),
where we presented hands-on stations about basic
astronomy and spectroscopy.
Additional events included information booths, complete
with sidewalk astronomy activities, at both the
“Lange Nacht der Museen” (literally the “Long Night
of the Museums”) at the Planetarium Mannheim and at
Heidelberg University’s “Uni-Meile”, the street fair celebrating
the university’s 625 th anniversary. HdA staff also
gave more than a dozen public talks, including six that
were part of the lunchtime lecture series on basic astron-
Fig. V.2.2a: Two neigbouring buildings: the main MPIA building
and, still under construction, the HdA building. (2 March
2011)
V.2 Haus der Astronomie – Centre for Astronomy Education and Outreach 87
omy organized by J. Wambsganss of Heidelberg University’s
Center for Astronomy.
Our visualization efforts also took off this year as,
with the help of scientists from MPIA, from Heidelberg
University and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical
Studies (Volker Springel, Andreas Bauer, Hubert Klahr,
Mario Flock, Kees Dullemond, Ralf Klessen), we produced
a set of brief movies for use in our fulldome projection
system. Even the background music was composed
and produced by ourselves in the free time KLaus
Jäger). The movies were premiered at the HdA’s official
opening, and have been used in our work ever since.
On the education side, “Wissenschaft in die Schulen!”
(literally “Science into the schools!”, abbreviated WIS)
in cooperation with the popular astronomy magazine
Sterne und Weltraum remains our flagship project. HdA
senior staff member Olaf Fischer, in charge of WIS-
Astronomy, and his team of (mostly external) authors
created 24 sets of curricular materials – two per months
– for teachers to use in bringing cutting-edge astronomy
into their classrooms. Each set is directly linked to
an article or news item in a current issue of Sterne und
Weltraum. The HdA’s activities for WIS-Astronomy are
kindly supported by the Reiff Foundation for Amateur
Astronomy.
The development of hands-on experiments remains
another mainstay of our work. This year saw the production
of 15 infrared kits (C. Scorza and M. Frommelt)
funded by he Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and the development
and production (N. Fischer and C. Scorza
Credit: M. Pössel/HdA