Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Immersive virtual reality provides an excellent way to experience astronomy facilities that the public generally cannot visit. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine has been used to create a 3D exhibit where visitors use a game controller to walk their avatars among cutting-edge optical and radio telescopes, with the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes hovering overhead. Several of the telescopes are animated. OSIRIS-Rex is seen next to a detailed and suitably scaled rendition of the Bennu asteroid, and part of the virtual real estate is textured as a Martian surface with several Mars missions included. Visits are self-guided with interactive posters giving the main scientific results of the various telescopes and missions.

Biography:

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 450 publications on education and observational cosmology, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught four online classes with 400,000 enrolled and 6 million minutes of video lectures watched. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and has won its career Education Prize. He has also been NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has written 120 popular articles about cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World, and nine popular science books.