Public Observatory Project - Transition Phase

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AST-1219836This award provides critical support to continue operating the Public Observatory at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) beyond the initial two-year period of construction, opening, and initial operation, and to keep it viable until it can become a permanent fully endowed education and public outreach feature on the National Mall.Visitors look through a fully professional telescope and an array of smaller specialized solar telescopes and have their experience enhanced and deepened by activity-based programming included in the observatory, adjacent to it, and in the Museum proper. NASM staff have successfully tested programs that synergistically combine the planetarium, the observatory, gallery tours and discovery stations, using support from several sources, including previous NSF awards. This has led to the Observatory becoming part of a major capital campaign to ensure its longevity. The present bridge award will support daytime and evening programming at the Observatory, increasing daily informal access by the public. It will also provide an effective training ground for undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering and technology (SMET) students to act as mentors and guides, learning to communicate the excitement of their science.The heightened positive visibility of an SMET facility on the National Mall makes the clear intellectual statement that astronomy is part of our culture, and the Public Observatory is a physical personification of the Smithsonian's goal to improve science literacy in the Nation. The Observatory also makes visible the national observatory system, and symbolizes the merit-based philosophy of that system. In these first two years, trained astronomy educators, interns, paid student Explainers and a host of volunteers enabled over 100,000 looks through telescopes by tens of thousands of people, in all categories imaginable from casual tourists to professional astronomers to local families to foreign travelers, to school and day camp groups.