Between July 13 and 15, 2022, the second version of the National Astronomy Education Congress was held by the worldwide network of National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAEC) in Chile and addressed the main challenges of strengthening astronomy education in the country. The Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) was part of this event, giving workshops on the use of simulators in astronomy education and a lecture by the Director of LCO, Leopoldo Infante. The activity also included a visit to the observatory, which was cancelled due to weather conditions.
This congress was held at the La Serena campus of the Universidad Central. It was attended by primary and secondary school teachers from all over the country, Astro-tourism operators, scientific disseminators, and those interested in teaching astronomy to their communities.
The event included three conferences, plenary lectures, poster exhibitions and workshops. One of the latter was “Use of Stellarium for teaching astronomy”, given by the Las Campanas observatory and dictated by Carol Rojas, astronomer, and Communication Manager at LCO, and Nicolas Piña, physics and mathematics professor and expert in astronomy didactics.
The Director of LCO, Leopoldo Infante, closed the congress with the conference “Discovering the remote cosmic Universe with our telescopes”, in which he spoke about the most outstanding research of the Carnegie telescopes. After the conference, it was planned a visit to the observatory’s telescopes with the participants. Unfortunately, it was cancelled due to bad weather conditions affecting the area.
The activity was held in person after a first fully online version in 2021, of which LCO was also part. NAEC was created by the Office of Astronomy Education of the International Astronomical Union and arises from the need to strengthen the teaching and learning of astronomy in our country.