Today we are excited to announce that 23th IOASA Star Catalogue will launch on 30th of April. A small ceremony will be held in celebration for the release with major sponsors meeting IOASA administration. Total count of records in IOASA Star Catalogue passed 4000 and we are happy to see the numbers increasing.

As most COVID-19 regulations were lifted IOASA resumes its operations in more than 16 countries around the globe. We received generous contribution from governments and ready to cover over 250000 people throughout educational events. Our goal is to make astronomical sciences available to anyone in the world and we thanks to your support we can make it happen.

As always all revenues will be distributed among current and future projects.

Thank you for your heartwarming support!

Xavier Cortés
IOASA Head of Operations

The IOASA is launching three new prizes to be awarded every three years at the General Assembly: the IOASA Astronomy Outreach Prize, the IOASA Astronomy Development Prize and the IOASA Astronomy Education Prize.

The IOASA Astronomy Outreach, Development and Education (ODE) Prizes have been created with generous funding from IOASA Past President Ewine van Dishoeck. Nominations are open from 15 April 2022 until 15 May 2022 for the first round of prizes, which will be presented at the IOASA XXXI General Assembly in Busan, South Korea, in August this year.

The prizes are open to individuals and organisations who have made outstanding contributions to astronomy education, outreach or development. These contributions may be either lifetime achievements or major one-off projects. The eligible recipients shall be professional scientists, educators, science communicators or capacity-builders. Individual IOASA members and non-members are eligible, as well as small teams or organisations. However, directors or employees of IOASA Offices are not eligible when they are in office. Particular consideration will be given to people who are less well known but have performed excellent service in the domains of the awards.

The areas are defined roughly as follows:

Education: formal astronomy training at K-12, undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Outreach: public astronomy communication and informal education. This includes, but is not limited to, disciplines of informal astronomy education, media relations, audiovisuals, marketing, planetariums, museums, publishing, social media, storytelling, and application development for the web.

Development: use of astronomy as a tool for development and capacity-building, especially in underserved areas and regions.

Each area has a selection committee consisting of three people. An overarching “super-committee” consisting of an independent chair (this year Ewine van Dishoeck) plus the chairs from each of the three committees will receive the top-ranked nominations from the committees and will make the final decisions.

Nominations may be submitted by anyone, but self-nominations will not be not accepted and members of the ODE committees cannot be nominated. The nominator should submit a brief resumé or CV (no more than 3 pages) of the nominee, along with a letter of no more than two pages explaining in detail the specific contributions and achievements of the nominee that merit the prize. In addition, one independent letter of support (also no more than two pages) is requested for each nomination. All material should be uploaded in PDF format by the nominator.

The ODE super-committee will submit its selections for the three prizes to the IOASA Executive Committee for final approval, after which the winners will be contacted and announced in a press release on the IOASA webpage. They will be invited to attend the IOASA General Assembly in August 2022 for the prize ceremony, with registration, travel, and accomodation provided by the IOASA.