Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

该项目的总体目标是通过在朴茨茅斯历史船坞举行的大型晚间活动，让朴茨茅斯地区的家庭和公众参与朴茨茅斯大学宇宙学和引力研究所开展的天体物理学、宇宙学和引力研究。这个STFC小型奖项将使我们能够在朴茨茅斯保持和发展成功的公众参与伙伴关系。自2013年以来，我们每年在朴茨茅斯历史造船厂（PHD）举办这项活动。在这个标志性的地点举办活动可以吸引那些了解造船厂的当地人，他们可能不太愿意来朴茨茅斯大学校园参加类似的活动。然而，如果我们不能证明有能力支付网站在天黑后继续开放的一些费用，那么缩短博士学习部门的预算将使这一活动的继续面临风险。为了解决这个困境，我们在这个小奖项中要求的一半资金将用于支付这个历史遗址在正常关闭后保持开放的人员费用。我们要求的另一半资金将用于评估本次活动对与会者的影响，既针对即将到来的2017年活动，也回顾2013年以来的活动。我们相信这个年度活动对参加的当地家庭和公众产生了重大影响，提高了他们对世界级的STFC资助的研究在朴茨茅斯进行的认识。为了降低评估的成本，以及实现教育朴茨茅斯大学本科生评估科学传播影响的第二个目标，我们计划将这项评估作为资助的夏季本科生研究项目的一部分。我们将在2017年1月31日的活动中找到一名志愿者来承担这项工作。在夏季，在我们的指导下，该本科生将利用评估指标和数据收集来尝试衡量我们的观众对我们的活动的行为、感受、价值和理解。这不仅将改善未来的活动，而且还将提供一个案例研究（我们的目标是将其写下来发表），以了解在全国各地举行的类似的当地观星主题活动的影响。

The overall aim of this project is to engage Portsmouth area families and members of the general public with the astrophysics, cosmology and gravitation research undertaken at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth through a large scale evening event held at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. This STFC Small Award will allow us to maintain and grow a successful public engagement partnership in Portsmouth. We have run this event at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (PHD) annually since 2013. Holding the event at this iconic location allows us to attract local people who know the Dockyard and might be less willing to come on to the campus of the University of Portsmouth for a similar event. However shortening budgets for the Learning Departments of PHD put the continuation of this event at risk if we cannot demonstrate an ability to cover some of the costs of keeping this site open after dark. To solve this dilemma, half of the funding we ask for in this Small Award will cover the staffing costs of keeping this historic site open after it normally closes. The other half of the funding we request will allow us to evaluate the impact that this event has on the people who attend, both for the upcoming event in 2017, but also looking back to events since 2013. We believe this annual event has a significant impact on the local families and members of the public who attend, in raising their awareness of world class, STFC funded research taking place right here in Portsmouth. In order to keep the costs of evaluation down, as well as enable a secondary aim of educating a Portsmouth undergraduate about evaluating the impact of science communication, we plan to do this evaluation as part of a funded summer undergraduate research project. We will identify an undergraduate to take this on who is one of the volunteers at the 31st Jan 2017 event. In the summer, under our supervision this undergraduate will make use of evaluation metrics and data collection to attempt to measure what our audience does, feels, values and understands as a result of our events. This will not only improve future events, but also provide a case study (which we aim to write up for publication) about the impact of similar local Stargazing themed events held all over he country.