The Europlanet Society support to Amateur Astronomy in planetary science and exoplanets observations

The Europlanet Association and its related Europlanet Society are a key part of the long-standing legacy of several research infrastructure projects funded by the European Commission. The last of those projects was the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (grant agreement No 871149), which was a partnership among more than 50 different beneficiary institutions and run from Feb. 2020 to July 2024. Europlanet 2024 RI provided free access to the world’s largest collection of planetary simulation and analysis facilities, developed data services and tools, offered funding to access a network of small (40 cm) and mid-size (1.0-2.0 m) telescopes and organized a large set of community support activities. While most of the project was oriented towards planetary scientists, the ground-based observational network was also open to applications from amateur astronomers [1]. In addition, several activities oriented towards amateur astronomers were organized with funding from Europlanet, including meetings, training workshops and topical workshops on professional and amateur astronomy collaborations. As an example of the later, the Europlanet Science Conference (EPSC), organized by the Europlanet Society, remains the largest European annual meeting on planetary science, and the only one with a well-stablished tradition to incorporate amateur astronomy sessions. 

In this presentation, we will highlight some of the key points in the support to amateur astronomy covered throughout the Europlanet 2024 RI. We will show lessons learnt, which include the importance of practical training, and successful examples of collaborations highlighting those that grew far beyond the expectations put in place in the project. We will also review the status of data and alert services oriented towards amateur astronomers and developed in Europlanet projects like the PARSEC Alert System (http://www.parsec-europlanet.eu/) [2] or PVOL (http://pvol2.ehu.eus/) [3].

While the funding from the Europlanet 2024 RI has ended, the Europlanet Society continues to provide support to amateur astronomy in Europe and beyond. The Europlanet Society is looking for funding opportunities to provide a healthy range of supporting activities to planetary sciences. These include specific actions to further develop collaborations between professional and amateur astronomy. The Europlanet Society is a membership society open to individual and organizational memberships including amateur astronomers and amateur organizations.

 

Acknowledgments: The Europlanet-2024 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No 871149.

 

References:

[1] Heward et al. Telescopes united, Astronomy & Geophysics, 61, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/astrogeo/ataa059.

[2] Podlewska-Gaca et al. PARSEC Alert System. European Planetary Science Congress. (2022) doi:10.5194/epsc2022-553.  https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-553.

[3] Hueso et al.  The Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) and its integration into the Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access (VESPA), Planetary and Space Science, 150, 22-35 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2017.03.014