INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
1919 - 2019
Pale Blue Dot:
Astronomy for Global Citizenship and Environmental Awareness
After one year of looking at one hundred years of milestones in astronomy with IAU100, let’s look back at us, Planet Earth, and how astronomy shows us the place of our home planet in the universe and can help us address global challenges.
The 30th anniversary of the iconic Voyager-1 Pale Blue Dot image will be celebrated on 14 February 2020. This iconic image illustrates the unique astronomical perspective on Earth: when observing our home planet from space, national boundaries disappear and the fragility of Earth becomes evident. This perspective is pertinent to remind ourselves to treat each other with kindness and take care of our home planet together.
How to get involved?
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IAU100 is inviting everyone to participate in its final global project by organising activities between 13-20 February 2020 to recognise the significant anniversary by organising activities around the topics of global citizenship and environmental awareness. In particular focusing on how astronomy can help us address today’s global challenges.
The Pale Blue Dot global project intends to facilitate event organizers to use astronomy as a tool to initiate conversations in their respective communities about global citizenship and uniting people from all cultures and backgrounds. Furthermore, this initiative aims to inform audiences about climate change by using the perspective of astronomy to remind the public that the Earth is our only habitable home.
A collection of Resources and Activity Ideas have been compiled to facilitate the organisation of activities for the IAU100 Pale Blue Dot initiative that encourage the project’s themes of global citizenship and environmental awareness. You can also learn more about the Pale Blue Dot image here.
Register your event under the category “Pale Blue Dot” using this form.
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Contact
For questions and inquiries about the Pale Blue Dot IAU100 global project, please contact:
Bethany Downer
Pale Blue Dot Project Coordinator, IAU100 Secretariat
Leiden University
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The Pale Blue Dot Project
The IAU European Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (E-ROAD) is setting up a global astronomy education initiative called Pale Blue Dot. The project will build on a previous programme, Universe Awareness, and use astronomy to inspire children aged 6 to 8 and broaden their perspective. The aims are to stimulate a sense of global citizenship, open-mindedness to other cultures and environmental awareness. Pale Blue Dot will be a part of a flagship project of the IAU OAD, designed to advance 3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals - SDG 16 (Peace), SDG 4 (Education) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
From the outset the project will be set up as a multidisciplinary research platform for studying to what extent such an inspirational programme can have a lasting influence on the perspective, ideas and value systems of young children. Besides helping to optimise the PBD methods and interventions, the research platform will be a vehicle for studying how the effect of such an astronomy education programme for children at a formative age can vary from country to country and culture to culture.