Hi everyone,

Thank you all so much for donating to and sharing our crowdfunding campaign for VR equipment! With your help, we've exceeded our $7000 goal, which means we can now ramp up development of our virtual reality science communication tools.

We're beginning to collaborate with a startup aimed at developing educational outreach content that would allow us to create VR versions of the astrophysical simulations you saw in our video and more! Additionally we're working with established industry partners to develop astronomical education material for VR.

Stay tuned over the summer for updates on how our content development is going and for your perks!

Thanks again!

Berkeley outreach team

Thanks to everyone who has donated so far. We're launching a mini-campaign to try and reach half of our goal going into the last week of crowdfunding. Help us raise $700 for another VR headset by next Monday through sharing the project! As an extra incentive we're starting a perk sale! Through this weekend only, private stargazing for you + ten friends is 50% off (now $500).

For those of you who are local, we wanted to let you know Cal day is this Saturday! All of UC Berkeley is open to the public to showcase the research going on here. Come by the astronomy department at Campbell Hall to hear public lectures, look at sunspots (safely), and check out a preliminary version of the interactive platform we're building with your donations!

For our next spotlight, we're showcasing Drummond Fielding, a graduate student in our department who researches how exploding stars launch powerful winds from galaxies. 

We just broke $2,500 mark! Thank you to everyone who has given a gift so far. Thanks to you, we can now make interactive touchscreen demos for outreach events in the Bay Area. But, it would be so much cooler if we could also have Virtual Reality headsets to bring along! Help us realize this next step by sharing our project and getting the word out. 

We also thought we'd share some of the cutting edge research going on in our department in a series of spotlight videos. In our first one, you can meet Dan Wertheimer, director of SETI, who is searching for extraterrestrial intelligence in the Universe.

Thank you to everyone who has given a gift so far! We've had a great start, raising more than 25% of our goal in the first week!

We just had a great turnout at the first Astro Night of the year tonight! Dr. Sasha Tchekhovskoy talked about studying black holes and how they can shoot out jets of material. 

Unfortunately, the rain prevented us from doing any stargazing tonight. It's times like these where it'd be great to have virtual telescopes so that we can gaze at the stars, even when it's a stormy night like tonight! So please help us reach our goal to make these virtual space experiences a reality by sharing our crowdfunding campaign and donating however much you can!