Bringing the night sky to Italian living rooms via livestream events

“Il cielo in salotto” (in English, “The sky in your living room”) is a 1-hour long format launched by EduINAF in 2020/2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, for live streaming events linked to astronomical phenomena – planetary alignments, eclipses, the full Moon, comets, etc. – on Youtube and Facebook. Initially meant to broadcast live telescope observations from the INAF network of observatories around the Italian peninsula (that had to close their doors to in-person visits for many months), the format evolved to also include 3D models of celestial objects, virtual tours of the observatories and their museums, and public engagement campaigns. Since Dec 2020, we planned 9 livestreams with a production team of 7 people (the authors, each with a fraction of FTE), collaborating with colleagues at 4+ observatories, guest scientists, amateur astronomy associations and other partners.

EduINAF is the online magazine of the National Institute for Astrophysics dedicated to education and public outreach, publishing regular content monthly.

Platform: Streamyard with “virtual camera” function to integrate added OBS features, e.g. sky simulations, pop-up videos, animated objects, virtual environments, background images, etc.

Virtual studio: green cloth on the wall, 4 white lights (9000K), reflex camera (24mm focal length), lavalier microphones, computer with a dedicated video card. Video + audio mixer to be added in the future.

Over the past two years, we improved the workflow of the production team, focussing on content and product quality. At the same time, we are witnessing an overall drop in views from 2020/2021 (tens of thousands) to 2022 (few thousands), caused at least in part by the changing audience habits in online video consumption (including of teachers and students) as the pandemic draws to a close. We are therefore working on new, lighter formats for the 2022/23 season to keep up content quality within a more sustainable production workflow.

• We conducted a focus group of ~40 (teachers, students, parents, pro & am astronomers) during the Supermoon livestream of May 2021.
• The results (high approval rate; 75% would watch again; appreciated live sky observation and questions to experts; slow rhythm; too long) were used to remodulate the format for the 2021/2022 season.
• New focus group planned for the Supermoon broadcast of July 2022.
• Overall, shows with the live observations of astronomical events (especially if hyped by the media, like a “SuperMoon” or a planetary alignment) appear to be more popular than those not linked to live or newsworthy events (e.g. virtual tours).