Abstract
The UCLA Planetarium hosts star shows and lectures on various astronomy
topics, educating UCLA and the broader Los Angeles community about
science and the wonders of the night sky. It serves over 4000 people per
year, as UCLA Astronomy’s largest outreach effort. We host private shows
for visiting school groups (30% of our attendees), shows for UCLA
astronomy courses (20%), and weekly public shows for the community at
large (50%). Our planetarium and its events are run exclusively by
graduate students, who also maintain its historic projectors and dome.
In the near future, we plan to improve and expand our outreach efforts
in two specific ways. Our outreach efforts are free for educational
groups, but we currently do not provide travel support for visiting
schools. We plan to actively reach out to school groups from underserved
communities and hope to raise funds to cover these schools’ field trip
and travel expenses. We also plan to improve our science communication
effectiveness, with strategies for improving volunteer recruitment,
training volunteers on effective public speaking skills, and improving
the quality of our existing repository of presentations. Of course,
these in person events are on hold due to the ongoing pandemic; in the
meantime, we are developing ways to serve our audience virtually. We
recently hosted our first “virtual” planetarium show on YouTube Live,
with over 1,700 viewers on the livestream and over 7,300 total viewers.
We welcome any suggestions or ideas to help us improve our planetarium
outreach efforts!