ICT Networking for Overcoming Technical and Social Barriers in Instrumental Analytical Chemistry EducationNETCHEM Work Meeting, December 8th, 2017, Belgrade, Serbia

1. REMOTE ACCESS CASE STUDY
EXPERIENCES FROM ASTRONOMY PROJECT
MILAN MILOŠEVIĆ
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS
UINIVERSITY OF NIŠ
ICT Networking for Overcoming Technical and Social Barriers in Instrumental Analytical Chemistry Education
NETCHEM Work Meeting, 4-9 December 2017, Belgrade, Serbia

2. WHY ASTRONOMY?
• One of the oldest of the natural sciences.
• It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the
origin of celestial objects and phenomena and their evolution.
• „From quarks to quasars“ - it studies the smallest and the largest objects in
the Universe.
• One of the few sciences where amateurs still play an active role, especially in
the discovery and observation of
transient phenomena.
• Amateur astronomers have made and
contributed to many important
astronomical discoveries, such as finding
new comets.
http://vimeo.com/57130400

3. INTRODUCTION
• Discovery of telescope (400 years ago) - raised the revolution in astronomy.
• Technological development - we are able to observe the Universe in the whole
electromagnetic spectrum.
• New equipment: DSLR, CCD and modified web cameras, supercomputers,
spectroscopes, information and communication technologies etc.
• Unfortunately – equipment is very expensive 
• Mostly unavailable to amateur astronomers
Photo: https://www.mpg.de/7913340/Galileo_Galilei_telescope

4. PROJECT
“ASTRONOMY FROM AN ARMCHAIR”
• Student’s project, in cooperation with Faculty of Science and Mathematics and
Astronomical Society “Alfa”
• Supported by program „Pokreni se za budućnost“ (PZB) and Philip Morris
operations a.d.
• The first astronomical observatory was built for non-professional astronomers
in south Serbia
• The observatory is remotely controlled and equipped for night-sky and Solar
observations.

5. PROJECT
“ASTRONOMY FROM AN ARMCHAIR”
• The crucial part of the project – popularization of astronomy
• Observations on regular basis for general publics
• Public talks on interesting topics in astrophysics and physics
• Most of talks and some observations were recorded and/or live streamed over the
Internet
• The most important:
• Most of the project was realised in Do-it-yourself way

6. HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
• 1996 – Astronomical Society „Alpha“
• Public talks - popular science
• Astronomical observations for general publics
• Only modest astronomical equipement
• The main goal - the city observatory and the
planetarium

10. “ASTRONOMY FROM AN ARMCHAIR“ (2012-2013)
• Project was accomplished by a five-member team of students from the
Department of Phyiscs, Faculty of Science and Mathematics, NiŠ, in
cooperation with members of the Astronomical society „Alpha“.
• Members:
• Zoran Tomić, coordinator
• Marko Rančić
• Saša Rančev
• Nenad Živić
• Milan Milošević
• Supervisor:
• Prof. Dr. Dragan Gajić

11. AIM OF THE PROJECT
• Promote astronomy as science
and to open the first
astronomical observatory in Niš,
on the roof of the Faculty.
• Possibility for onsite and offsite
observations
• Observation of the night sky and
the Sun

12. REMOTE ASTRONOMY?
Mauna Kea Observatory
iTelescope.com

13. COMPLETELY AUTONOMOUS TELESCOPES
Example

14. POSSIBILITIES
• Completely autonomous telescope
• Remote control of the telescope (one user at a time)
• Presentation for a small group
• Live streaming

15. GOOD EXAMPLE
OF
AUTONOMOUS
OBSERVATORIES
WORKING
TOGETHER

16. REMOTE ASTRONOMY
IN NIŠ
• Education and Astronomy for
Schools
• Sky Tours Live Streams
• Astrophotography
• Research… maybe, one day ☺

17. ONLINE OBSERVATION – 1ST LIVE STREAMING

18. 100.000+ VIEWERS IN ONE DAY
MARCH 20, 2015
Live straming…

19. PUBLIC TALKS – POPULAR SCIENCE
LIVE STREAM
• Available equipment
• Free software and services
• 2-3 laptops + tablet or phone
• Presenter
• Video mix
• Communication / chat
• Network: LAN + 2 internet link
• Uplink for stream
• Independent link (preview)
• (Web) camera + microphone

20. LIVE STREAM
• Software: vMix Live Video Streaming (www.vmix.com)
• Video streaming platforms: Ustream, Livestream, … 
• The best experience Google Hangouts and Youtube
• Embed to websites!
• Communication – chat (comments), Twitter, Facebook
• Telescope control:
• Propriety software, Stellarium
• Remote access - Teamviewer

21. INTERNET IS GREAT, IT IS GOOD TO BE ONLINE
HOWEVER…

23. (ASTRO)PHYSICS AND SCIENCE

24. HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
• The first and the second video conference with CERN (2011)
• Organized by SEENET-MTP Network and Physical Society Niš
Video conference with CERN organized during BSS2011

25. CERN MASTERCLASSES 2016, 2017…
• The International Particle Physics Masterclasses is Serbia are organized by
Universities of Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Kragujevac, in conjunction with the
International Particle Physics Outreach Group.
• The aim of the Masterclasses is to introduce an exciting and rapidly developing
scientific field dealing with some of the fundamental secrets of the nature to
the 4th year high school students.
• The lectures given by active researchers and professors will bring insight into
topics and methods of basic research of matter, particles and forces acting
between them, thus enabling students to perform exercises with the real
data from particle physics experiments performed at CERN, Geneva.

26. CERN MASTERCLASSES
2016, 2017…

27. TOOLS FOR STUDENTS - SIMULATIONS
HYPATIA (ATLAS, CERN)

28. CERN VIRTUAL TOUR & VIDEO CONFERENCE

29. CERN – REAL TOUR ☺

30. CAN WE USE IT FOR REAL SCIENCE?
PROBABLY YES, WE WILL TRY SOON…

31. CERN – SEENET-MTP PHD TRAINING PROGRAM
• SEENET-MTP - Southeastern European Network in Mathematical and Theoretical
Physics (23 institutions, 13 partners, about 400 individual members)
• Series of intense, self-connected, one-week seminars for PhD students
• Lectures followed by appropriate exercises, given by 2-3 professors-specialist and 1-
2 assistants.
• 4 seminars:
• Supergravity
(Belgrade, Serbia, 2015)
• Modern Aspects of Quantum Field Theory
(Bucharest, Romania, 2015)
• Computational methods in Cosmology and General Relativity (Timisoara, Romania, 2016)
• New Trends in High Energy Theory
(Sofia, Bulgaria, 2017)
• Next:
• SEENET-MTP Balkan School and Workshop BSW2018:
School: High Energy and Particle Physics: Theory and Phenomenology and Workshop:
Field Theories and Early Universe
http://phd.seenet-mtp.info
http://bsw2018.seenet-mtp.info/

32. THEORETICAL PHYSICS…
International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste, Italy

33. LIVE STREAMING?
• Lot of problems!
• Blackboard (whiteboard) is essential
• You can use smartboard, however…
• In most cases – presentation + blackboard
• There are some solutions
• ICTP Postgraduate Diploma Programme (www.ictp.tv) recorded by EyA
System, developed by Science Dissemination Unit (SDU) and the ICTP
Scientific FabLab.
• http://sdu.ictp.it/eya/about.html and http://www.openeya.org/

34. LIVE STREAMING
• Unfortunately, not in real time 
• Plans for future – build similar system (and, maybe, test it at BS2018) ☺
HOUR 1&2 (2017.09.18)
Lecturer: K.S. Narain (ICTP)

35. THANK YOU / HVALA / ХВАЛА ☺
Milan Milošević
Department of Physics
Faculty of Science and Mathematics
University of Niš, Serbia
mmilan@svetnauke.org
www.svetnauke.org
facebook.com/mmilan
linkedin.com/in/mmilann/
http://alfa.org.rs
http://www.seenet-mtp.info