THE NEED OF DISTANCE LEARNING FOR ASTRONOMY DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA

Astronomy is a popular topic for the public in term of astronomical phenomenon such as occultations, solar and lunar eclipses or meteor showers. In term of education, astronomy also is popular as one of the world Science Olympiads. Social media, as the new trend in communicating and connecting people, plays a significant role in increasing the size of the astronomy community. Beyond IYA 2009, more and more astronomy activities have been done in many places in Indonesia. New astronomy communities have been formed in several cities and public engagement is also high in social media especially on Facebook and Twitter. In this paper, we will discuss the lesson learned from astronomy outreach achievements in Indonesia and the need for citizen science projects as a distance learning tool for the public as part of astronomy development in Indonesia. We argue and propose that this project will be also important up to a regional scope.