What is Outreach?
Outreach comprises all the things we do as a club to engage with the general public. This includes public and private star parties,
educational events such as STEM school 
festivals and speaking engagements, scout troop badge work, corporate events, regional and national events, and ATM meetings (amateur telescope making/maintenance). 99% of our events are staffed free of charge and on a volunteer basis, with only the occasional corporate, government, or private event for a fee.
Outreach is by far and away the most active aspect of our club. Its events present the face of AAS to the general public and is responsible for most of our membership growth. New membership means more volunteers for our events and the cash flow from club dues pay for our outreach efforts, member events, maintenance of our observatories/dark sky sites, new/upgraded equipment, and our future goals such as club owned venues.
Outreach events are a great way to socialize and enjoy our astro-hobby at the same time. Interacting with event guests, answering their questions, and showing them celestial objects is a very rewarding experience on many levels. From meeting new people, learning something new, displaying and demonstrating our equipment, to the excitement and awe in a child’s eyes after seeing the Moon or Saturn through a scope for the first time are all very fulfilling experiences.
How Do I Take Part?
There are many ways to help out. The easiest way is to volunteer your time and equipment by attending the events by responding to the volunteer notices you receive through 
email. Just make sure your membership account options are set to be able to receive them. If you are
unsure how to do this email outreach@austinastro.org for help.
Participate in Outside Events/Star Parties: If you don’t have a telescope you can staff the welcome table, junior astronomy table, telescope petting zoo, or answer questions and give laser tours of the night sky.
If you bring your telescope or binoculars you may set up (similar to a booth at a festival) and show guests various celestial objects throughout the night and answer their questions. The typical guest is happy to look at anything…stars, the Moon, planets, or DSOs. It doesn’t matter what type or size of equipment you bring as it takes many volunteers to provide enough opportunity to see something with a crowd of up to 300+ guests. With or without equipment it’s a team effort to put on a good show.
Staff Inside/Educational Events: These are generally orientated towards young people and include festivals, STEM events, scout packs, and various public and private school events. The organizers are generally looking for an in-general introduction to astronomy for their guests and some info on career opportunities in the astronomical field. We usually set up a table with various astronomy
related displays, star charts, and info handouts. plus some small telescopes that the guests can look at celestial object photos we have taped to a far wall. AAS staff answers questions and engages the guests in astronomy related conversation.
Offer Your Expertise at the ATM Workshops: If you have an area of practical astronomy that you excel in enough to teach others, volunteer your time at one of our monthly meetings at our East Austin facility Area 51.2. Email outreach@austinastro.org with your inquiries or suggestions for a class. Topics can include mount alignment, telescope repair, mirror cleaning, mirror grinding, Pixinsight tutorials, astrophotography, EAA, how to find DSOs, etc. This is an excellent way to get to know AAS members and talk shop with others who share the same interests. Anybody can attend, member or non-member, and bring their equipment for help. This is one of the ways we engage with the public and passively recruit new members at the same time.
Join the Outreach Committee: This committee handles all the administration duties of outreach, including creating the
yearly schedule of events, fielding new requests throughout the year, advertising special events, negotiating with new venues, inspecting venues for event suitability, AAS volunteer recruitment, and hosting the events. An event host will give the night sky orientation talk plus a laser sky tour, conduct various star party contests, and be responsible for a
report summarizing the event. Any member can join and contribute as 
much time as they can afford to give. If you would like more info or want to join the committee please email outreach@austinastro.org.
How Do I Schedule a Star Party?
Of course any member can schedule and host a 
star party at any time and recruit other members privately. However, if you want to enlist the club’s email contact list and send out a volunteer request, or post event notices to its social media platforms, you must schedule the event through the Outreach Committee. This is to ensure there are no conflicting events that may cause insufficient staffing and severely reduce the quality of events that have already been committed to. The club has spent many years building up relationships with dark site venues and the local community that we want to maintain in good standing and providing a quality well-staffed experience to guests is critical.
The best way to get a star party scheduled is to submit a Request a Star Party form from the AAS website before you
have settled on a date for it. If you submit the form after the
date has been set, that day may not be available for your event. The Outreach Committee will try to accommodate all requests to the best of the club’s ability. The ability to staff multiple events in the same week depends entirely on the number of volunteers available. The more volunteers we have to bring telescopes and host these events the more we can schedule. If you are willing to host your own event the chances of getting it scheduled increases greatly. Weekday events are more difficult to staff than weekend events.
AAS Event Schedule
There are two Outreach event schedules: public and private. Public star parties are advertised to the general public and private star parties are by invitation only. Public star parties are listed on our calendar of events on our website home page and the private events are listed on this page only. There will also be some “Proposed” star parties listed. These are events that have been requested but not scheduled because of a conflict with previously scheduled events. If we can get enough AAS members interested in hosting and/or staffing a Proposed event we can schedule it. For example, if an elementary school near where you live requests an event but we already have one scheduled for that day/week you could volunteer to host it and we could schedule it.
This list will be updated as new events are scheduled. AAS members may volunteer for or attend any star party listed below. To volunteer for or host one of these events, for more details about an event, to schedule your own event, or to submit suggestions or inquiries, email outreach@austinastro.org
The AAS Outreach public star party scheduling process begins in
October for the following year with the goal of finalizing it by January 1st. Private events get added to the schedule as they are requested and as we are able to fulfill them. A schedule year runs from January to December. We usually do not schedule any public events in January and very few to none in December.
The Member Services Chair gets first choice of the darkest nights (no Moon) for our member-only star parties, and then our public event state park and city partners get their choice of what is left, usually opting for as little Moon as possible. The City of Pflugerville prefers to have their events on the first Friday of every month regardless of Moon phase to help build attendance with event dates that are fixed. Currently there are approximately 28 of these public events each year.
We typically get 15-25 private star party requests throughout the year that we try to accommodate if possible. The venues and organizers for these are very diverse: downtown businesses, libraries, schools, UT, restaurants, bars, wineries, breweries, live music venues, birthday parties, neighborhood parks, Dark Sky organizations, and scout troops. The majority are nighttime star parties but quite a few are daytime events such as school carnivals and STEM events.
To view upcoming AAS events, please login and return to this page.