Outreach at LPL
Faculty, staff, and students at LPL take every opportunity to engage with our communities to promote and support science education and outreach.
Upcoming Events
Science In the Community
Arizona/NASA Space Grant
The Arizona/NASA Space Grant Consortium, headquartered at LPL, contributes to the nation's science enterprise by implementing research, education and public service projects through a national network of university-based Space Grant consortia.
Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter
Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter is an exceptional science learning facility located at Steward Observatory's "sky island" observing site. The SkyCenter builds upon the uniqueness of the 9,157 foot summit of Mt. Lemmon and the extensive knowledge base at the University of Arizona to deliver educational programs, including SkyNights StarGazing Program and UA Sky School.
Space Drafts
Space Drafts is Tucson’s flavor of Astronomy on Tap. Talks are held one Wednesday of every month at one of Tucson’s finest microbreweries, The Borderlands Brewing Company (119 E. Toole Ave., Tucson) at 7.00pm.
Space Drafts is free and open to all ages (of humans and dogs alike).
The Art of Planetary Science (TAPS)
The Art of Planetary Science is an annual art exhibition run that celebrates the beauty and elegance of science. Founded by LPL graduate students in 2013 as a public outreach project to engage the local community in our work, it continues to be organized and run by volunteer students each year. Scientists are encouraged to participate by producing artwork that is created from scientific data or that incorporates scientific ideas; artists are invited to submit artwork that is inspired by those same themes. The event is a bridge between the local science and art communities, and demonstrates how the scientific and artistic processes are interconnected.
Citizen Science
BeautifulMars Project
We have a simple philosophy: HiRISE is “the people’s camera” because we believe that knowledge about Mars belongs to everyone. The BeautifulMars Project, which helps us talk to people who want to learn about Mars but may have little–to–no English skills.
Catalina Outer Solar System Survey
The Catalina Outer Solar System Survey is a citizen science project aimed at discovering the most distant objects in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). The project takes images of the night sky from the Catalina Sky Survey whose mission is to find the closest objects in the solar system, near-Earth asteroids, and looks at them over several months to see the slow movement of TNOs. After possible TNOs have been filtered and identified by a computer, they need a final check by a human to tell if they are real or a false detection. That is where citizen scientists come in!
