Astronomy And Society: The Road Ahead

Astronomy, of all the sciences, is possibly the one with the most public appeal across all age groups. This is also evidenced by the existence of a large number of planetaria and amateur astronomy societies, which is unique to the field.

Astronomy is known as a `gateway science’, with an ability to attract students who then proceed to explore their interest in other STEM fields too. Astronomy’s link to society is therefore substantive and diverse. In this white paper, six key areas are analysed, namely outreach and communication, astronomy education, history and heritage, astronomy for development, diversity, and hiring practices for outreach personnel.

The current status of each of these areas is described, followed by an analysis of what is needed for the future. A set of recommendations for institutions, funding agencies, and individuals are evolved for each specific area.

This work charts out the vision for how the astronomy-society connection should take shape in the future, and attempts to provide a road-map for the various stakeholders involved.

Aniket Sule, Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, Moupiya Maji, Surhud More, Virendra Yadav, Anand Narayanan, Samir Dhurde, Jayant Ganguly, S. Seetha, Ajit Mohan Srivastava, B. S. Shylaja, Yogesh Wadadekar

Comments: 22 pages, Accepted for publication in special issue of Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
Subjects: Physics Education (physics.ed-ph); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2501.06538 [physics.ed-ph] (or arXiv:2501.06538v1 [physics.ed-ph] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2501.06538
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Submission history
From: Aniket Sule
[v1] Sat, 11 Jan 2025 13:06:26 UTC (59 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06538
Astrobiology, Astronomy,