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Your Night out under the Stars: Reaching beyond Native Audiences (page 40)
Francien Bossema, Joaõ Retrê, Sérgio Pereira, Pedro Russo

Summary

To invite an international audience to engage with astronomy in Lisbon, we organised an outreach event with lectures, workshops and observations with telescopes. The event was held in the evening, was attended by 203 people and was aimed mainly at young adults visiting or living in Lisbon, as well as families. We aimed to give a large number of people of diverse nationalities the opportunity to interact with researchers and be inspired by astronomy, while enjoying a nice evening out. Lisbon is a trendy tourist destination, and we used this event to project a more international image of Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA). This event was organised by IA in Lisbon, in collaboration with Leiden University (the Netherlands) and the Planetário Calouste Gulbenkian — Centro Ciência Viva (Lisbon). In this paper, we outline the methods chosen to achieve these goals, how they were implemented in practice and discuss the effect of the chosen methods. We also share suggestions for organisers of similar events in the future.