Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-1031, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-1031
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Virtual and Augmented Reality for increasing the awareness of current scientific research

Laura Daricello, Laura Leonardi, Antonio Maggio, Salvatore Orlando, Ignazio Pillitteri, and Fabrizio Bocchino
Laura Daricello et al.
  • INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Palermo, Italy (antonio.maggio@inaf.it)

Virtual reality (VR) devices allow the exploration of 3D data in a fully immersive fashion and make it possible to create a powerful engagement experience and a direct interaction with current scientific data to learn more about astronomy in Education and Public Outreach (E&PO) activities. In 2019 the INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo (INAF-OAPa) launched 3DMAP-VR (3-Dimensional Modeling of Astrophysical Phenomena in Virtual Reality; Orlando et al. 2019, RNAAS 3, ID.176), a project for visualizing 3D results of astrophysical (magneto)-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations, through VR equipments. The models, uploaded on the Sketchfab portal (a platform widely used to publish and share 3D models and VR contents), received a very positive feedback from the scientific community and the general public.  Here we will show some of the scenes produced in the framework of 3DMAP-VR  to describe astrophysical phenomena. More specifically, we will focus our attention on MHD simulations describing the interaction of exoplanets (https://skfb.ly/6QYtC) with their host stars, and on artististic views of exoplanets which are based on information extracted from multi-wavelength observations, such as in the case of exoplanets 55 Cancri (https://skfb.ly/6R6Pt) and Wasp-76b (https://skfb.ly/6QZHF). Moreover, the 3DMAP-VR project team used augmented reality to produce informative videos to explore the characteristics of some of these models, published on media.inaf.it and edu.inaf.it. These E&PO products not only allowed the public to understand the astrophysical phenomena but they have stimulated great synergy between the outreach team and the astronomers, and between researchers and the public.

How to cite: Daricello, L., Leonardi, L., Maggio, A., Orlando, S., Pillitteri, I., and Bocchino, F.: Virtual and Augmented Reality for increasing the awareness of current scientific research, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 Sep–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-1031, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-1031, 2020.