Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
A free public lecture series founded in 1999 at Foothill College featuring leading astronomers, including Nobel laureates and National Academy of Sciences members, presented six Wednesday evenings each academic year and co-sponsored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, SETI Institute, and UC Observatories.
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Foothill College Astronomy Program (Dual Enrollment)
High school students in grades 9-12 can dual-enroll tuition-free in Foothill College's transferable astronomy sequence (General Astronomy: Solar System; Stars, Galaxies & Cosmology; and the Astronomy Laboratory), which includes hands-on observational and data-analysis projects using real astronomical equipment.
UC Santa Cruz Science Internship Program (SIP) – Astronomy & Astrophysics Track
A 9-week summer research internship at UC Santa Cruz that pairs high school students (ages 14-17) one-on-one with UCSC astronomy faculty and graduate mentors on real astrophysics projects, such as mapping galaxy environments with James Webb Space Telescope data or studying stellar populations in M31/M33.
Eastbay Astronomical Society
A nonprofit amateur astronomy club founded in 1924 and based at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, offering a discounted student membership with a telescope loaner program, a Telescope Makers' Workshop, and members-only viewing nights on Chabot's historic telescopes.
Exoplanet Watch (NASA)
A NASA citizen-science project in which volunteers, including complete beginners, observe exoplanet transits with their own telescope or request free archival/robotic-telescope data, analyze the resulting light curves with NASA's free EXOTIC software, and submit results to a shared scientific database.
Galaxy Zoo (Zooniverse)
A Zooniverse citizen-science project, active since 2018, in which volunteers classify the shapes of distant galaxies from telescope images, including new imagery from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to help astronomers study how galaxies form and evolve.
Las Cumbres Observatory – 100 Global High School Teams
A Las Cumbres Observatory education program that gives high school student teams free access to LCO's global network of 0.4-meter robotic telescopes to observe galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, with online training in astronomical data-analysis tools such as SalsaJ and TopCAT.