Team milestones

Emergence of the idea to create the organization, development of the concept, recruitment of the first members.

Completed

At the end of August 2022, the idea was proposed to create an organization that would support Ukrainian astronomers in various ways. Initially, the team consisted of only four astronomers from different fields and with diverse backgrounds. Like most similar initiatives, we started with a series of chaotic processes, driven by the desire to somehow impact the rather difficult situation that had developed in our science over the past decades and had obviously only worsened during the full-scale invasion.

To determine which directions we should focus our efforts on, we conducted a series of analytical assessments. Based on these and considering our knowledge and skills, we roughly formed our initial strategy, which, with some changes, remains in place to this day.

As expected, we concluded that the situation with Ukrainian astronomical education and science is extremely difficult but not hopeless. The main complicating factor turned out to be the variety and prevalence of problems, as well as their interconnection: to fully solve almost any single problem, it is necessary to simultaneously address about a dozen related issues.

Conclusions

Considering our limited resources, we decided not to spread them across all possible areas of activity but to focus on a few key ones:

1. Several relatively strong fields were identified, and within one of them was the study of variable stars – a series of TESS-UA projects was launched after a short preparation period.
2. We recognized the significant lack of specialists and the critical shortage of students and young postgraduates as the key problem of Ukrainian astronomy. Therefore, we decided to invest in the youth and organize future projects in a way that would encourage them to conduct scientific research.
3. The main source of information for schoolchildren and students is Wikipedia. However, the quality of articles there is mediocre, with much unverified or even unreliable data. Therefore, the development of Wikipedia was included in our future areas of work.
4. Despite rather informative assessments, at that time we lacked a clearer understanding of the situation, particularly critically missing detailed and objective numbers. Therefore, it was decided to conduct a full comprehensive analytical study as soon as the opportunity arises.
5. The communication component is extremely important. Part of the problems is directly related to the almost complete lack of communication about our achievements and problems in astronomy. It is necessary to talk about our astronomy not only to Ukrainians but also to foreigners, without embellishing or downplaying our achievements.
6. Projects aimed at providing financial assistance to our scientists were deemed non-priority at this stage, as to attract sufficient funds (astronomy is an expensive science), our organization needs to go through several more necessary stages of development and transformation.