Il cielo in salotto: lessons learnt from livestreaming astronomical events in Italy

“Il cielo in salotto” (in English, “The sky in your living room”) is a format for live streaming events of astronomical phenomena devised in 2020 by EduINAF (the official online magazine for education and public outreach of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, INAF), with the aim of engaging the general public and students with astronomy and space science remotely in the various waves and isolation periods of the pandemic. 

Originally designed to broadcast live telescope observations from the INAF network of observatories, the format evolved in the last year to include 3D models of celestial objects and virtual tours of the INAF institutes, museum and observatories. These events are enriched with live interviews and discussion with INAF researchers and supported by large-scale public engagement campaigns conducted together with space enthusiasts, amateur astronomy associations and other partners. On the occasion of a partial solar eclipse, we also involved telescopes from other European countries (that were better located to observe the event) in partnership with Europlanet.

In this talk, we will present some of the technical and logistical solutions we adopted for the broadcast. Moreover, we will look in detail at the results of a focus group conducted on the latest event (the “SuperMoon” of 13 July 2021) of this format, comparing with results from the very first live event (during the “SuperMoon” of 26 May 2021) and present lessons learnt from two years of experience, that could be of interest to colleagues organising similar events in other countries.