An idea for a European Astronomy A/V Lab

Introduction

Through the past two years personal experience has led us to realize an obvious need for – and huge potential in – a small European Laboratory producing Astronomy Audio/Visual Products. The Lab would use astronomical data – images, spectra, and other measurements – from European projects on the ground and in space. Data that today are left nearly unexploited in the archives.

The outcome or the products of this work – all kinds of images, illustrations, animations and movies – would be used for educational material and outreach by a) the involved European organizations, b) the Lab itself, and c) the press, educators and public directly (naturally all free of charge). One could imagine a multitude of purposes for the materials: Press releases, textbooks, educational programmes, web sites, CD-ROMs, interactive kiosks in planetaria, IMAX movies, TV footage etc. etc.

To put it differently this Lab would be exploiting the vast amounts of data from ground and space, which currently are hidden in inaccessible data archives, and make them available for Europe’s press, educators and the public – especially young people.

There is an obvious link with the Virtual Observatories now under construction – both on the VO ‘consumer’ side – benefiting from the VO structures and tools to optimize the production of outreach and education material – and from the VO ‘producer’ side – for instance by making PR images VO compatible and thereby usable in a much wider context.

General aims

To share the excitement of space with the public
To encourage the younger generation to pursue science careers

Specific aims

To develop innovative methods for visualisation and utilize these in visual and written communication
To visualize the vast amounts of astronomical data from ground and space
Disseminate these visualisation products to press, educators and public

Possible implementation
Some obvious questions for this European Astronomy A/V Lab are:

Why now?
1. Europe has never received so much excellent astronomical data as now flooding into archives in unrivalled quantities from ground and space, and this trend will continue in the future.
2. We have never had as magnificent technologies for treating the data and making them available to laymen.
3. The public and press have never been as ‘hungry’ for ‘pretty pictures’, illustrations and animations as now.

Why hasn’t this been done before?
For the reasons of complexity explained above there is a definite need for a pan-European effort to get above the ‘critical mass’ for a laboratory such as this. No individual organisation would be able to gather the technical, astronomical, communicational and graphical know-how necessary. It would need a multi-national effort and an effort spanning over the boundaries of organisations to take the most exiting and potentially interesting data sets and convert them into high-grade existing education and outreach products. The advantages of creating a dedicated Laboratory – as opposed to the existing small efforts dispersed all over Europe – are great and would enable the production of unparalleled quantities of education and outreach products.

Duration
It is foreseen that the effort will need to be sustained to use the avalanche of accumulated know-how in the Laboratory and therefore need to run over an initial period of 3 to 5 years.

We welcome collaboration on these issues. Please contact us.