Astronomy Outreach

Astro Night! at UC Berkeley

Astro Night is a free stargazing and lecture event open to the public atop Campbell Hall on UC Berkeley's campus, usually April through November on the first Thursday of the month. Come look through our fleet of telescopes (including the awesome 17-inch in our rooftop observatory) and learn about the Universe from the astronomy department's world-class researchers.

Visit the webpage for the schedule and the latest news.

UCLA Planetarium

As a graduate student, I deeply enjoyed interacting with the local community as one of the coordinators for the UCLA Planetarium. The graduate-student coordinators (including myself) were responsible for management of the planetarium, with volunteer support from the rest of the grads and financial support from the Physics & Astronomy Department and private donors.

During 2011-2015, I served the role of coordinator by scheduling shows for the public and for private educational groups, selecting and creating content for shows, maintaining the planetarium equipment, and maintaining the planetarium's website and Facebook page.

Of course, I also gave my fair share of planetarium shows! Speaking on topics from the solar system to black holes and from exoplanets to galaxies, I really loved showing people the wondrous side of astronomy. Even after presenting more shows than I could count, it was always great to hear visitors ranging from preschoolers to senior citizens say "Ooooh" when I turned the lights down and brought the stars out.

Astronomy Live!

My other primary outreach work was through the astronomy graduate student organization Astronomy Live!. For over three years, I volunteered with this group to spread understanding and excitement about astronomy to members of the Los Angeles community, primarily schoolchildren. For our numerous activities I made comets, ran solar telescope viewings, taught about galaxies, launched rockets, demonstrated adaptive optics, and built a man-sized 3-D model of the constellation of Orion.