Applications are now open to host the 2024 Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) conference. These conferences, held at least every two years, are co-organised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Commission C2 — Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) and the IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO).

Letters of Intent (LoI) and full Proposals to host a CAP Conference are considered roughly two years before the event. The call to host CAP 2024 is now open and applications are in two steps:

• First, submit a Letter of Intent (LoI) via this form.
• After the approval of the Letter of Intent (LoI) by the CAP Conferences Organisers, then submit a full Proposal.

The deadline to submit the Letter of Intent to host CAP 2024 is 30 August 2022. You can read more details on how to become a CAP Conference host here.

Important dates for the selection of the host for CAP 2024 are:

• 30 August 2022: deadline to submit Letters of Intent to host CAP 2024
• 12–16 September 2022: down-selection of the LoI
• 30 September 2022: request for full Proposals
• 31 January 2023: deadline to submit full Proposals
• 28 February 2023: public announcement of the winning bid

The 2022 CAP conference will be held from 12 to 16 September 2022, at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and online. This year the CAP Conferences Scientific Organising Committee selected the topic “Communicating Astronomy for a Better World” and cordially invites the community to join us in Sydney and online.

More information

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 12 000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

The IAU Commission C2 is a think/do-tank that convenes the astronomy communication community and seeds initiatives to explore new ways to communicate astronomy with the public. Its mission is to: encourage and enable a much larger fraction of the astronomical community to take an active role in explaining what we do (and why) to our fellow citizens; act as an international, impartial coordinating entity that furthers the recognition of outreach and public communication on all levels in astronomy; encourage international collaborations on outreach and public communication; endorse standards, best practices and requirements for public communication.

The main goals of the IAU C2 CAP Conferences Working Group are to organise a Communicating Astronomy with the Public (CAP) Conference and, co-organise the call for hosting the CAP Conference, select the winning bid and act as the Scientific Advisory Committee of the conference, establishing the theme and sub-themes of the conference, evaluating the abstracts and supervising the selection of invited speakers.

The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach (OAO) is a joint project of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The mission of the OAO is to engage the public in astronomy through access to astronomical information and communication of the science of astronomy. This is implemented through a network of IAU National Outreach Coordinators (NOCs) and the IAU’s public engagement initiatives. The work of the OAO is about building bridges between the IAU and the global astronomy community of amateur astronomers, outreach professionals, educators, communicators, and the general public, and through international collaboration, to make the science of astronomy accessible to all.

Links

• Communicating Astronomy with the Public Official Website 
• Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2022 

Contacts

Ramasamy Venugopal
CAP 2022 SOC Co-Chair
IAU Office of Astronomy for Development
Tel: +27 60 776 3832
Email: rv@astro4dev.org  

Samir Dhurde
CAP 2022 SOC Co-Chair
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Tel: +91 8983336912
Email: samir@iucaa.in 

Lina Canas
CAP 2022 SOC Co-Chair & OAO Director
IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach
Tel: +81-(0)422-34-3966
Email: lina.canas@nao.ac.jp 

Lars Lindberg Christensen
IAU Director of Communications
Cell: +1 520 461 0433/+49 173 38 72 621
Email: lars.christensen@noirlab.edu