Stargazing and Beyond: A Global Network of Citizen Astronomers

Astronomy is a science that inspires everyone, which makes it a great tool for expanding scientific literacy. It also has a uniquely powerful ability to make us aware of Earth’s value and fragility. And by inspiring people to engage in citizen science, astronomy fosters not only scientific research but also collaborative knowledge- building that’s based on a dialogue between experts and amateurs. The Unistellar network is by far the largest network of telescopes and citizen astronomers around the world, with more than 13,000 digital telescopes in more than 50 countries. This network collected more than 4,000 scientific observations in 2022 and our citizen astronomers have helped the NASA TESS mission by confirming exoplanets and supported NASA DART by recording the impact live and its aftermath, validating the efficiency of the kinetic impactor technique to protect humanity against the threat of asteroid impacts. We present here some of the key scientific results achieved in 2021-2024, and future developments in education.