In the global world "under one sky", we like to share information on the multitude of cultures. When travelling we are interested in other people's artwork, cuisine, music and dances - and in astronomy we are interested in their constellations and various ways of thinking about the sky & celestial objects.
Humans everywhere on Earth have created their own "celestial artwork" by inventing constellations and naming stars and other visual objects, in most cases after deities and demons that were considered in charge of the success of seasonal activities. Subsequently, the practical purpose of observing the sky was usually a) to forecast seasonal weather to minimize the risks of voyages, agriculture, stock farming and other activities, and b) to provide reliable patterns for navigation. Over time and by exchange with other cultural practices, development of empires and new cultural technologies, these original purposes got lost, and only stories and mythologies remained.
When the modern projection planetarium was invented in Jena one hundred years ago, the original purpose of being a “model of the Ptolemaic world view” caused the modelling of a sphere of fixed stars and the Milky Way as a spherical projection screen (for the motion of planets). During presentations and talks, Graeco-Roman mythology was used to help the viewer memorize the patterns of fixed stars and distinguish them from the moving planets.
Since then, the world has tremendously changed: i) in the 1920s, the International Astronomical Union standardized constellations (names, abbreviations, borders), ii) ancient Greek and Latin languages, and the reading of mythological stories from antiquity, are no longer compulsory parts of higher education. These stories are becoming as foreign as stories from anywhere else in the world, (iii) media technologies have developed a lot. Planetariums are no longer limited to topics of astronomy but are called "digital dome theatres", (iv) the simulated sky is available also in interactive applications for desktop computers (on flat or curved screens) and smartphones, and (v) the IAU started in 2015 to assign traditional and even newly coined names from various kinds of traditions alike with the declared goal of preserving cultural heritage from all over the world.
The Graeco-Roman starry sky is a similarly artificial synthesis of numerous cultures known at that time but it was composed by the authority of Ptolemy of Alexandria. With a similar but more liberal open-source-attempt to unite humanity “under one sky”, we announce a workshop on topics related to the cultural history of names and images in the sky (for stars, constellations, star clusters, "nebulae" such as the Milky Way, galaxies and gas clouds, historical maps & globes, ancient star catalogues ...) and their didactic preparations for a global audience.
Most importantly we are focussing on the management of this data in order to make it available for planetarium shows and computer simulations:
For historians, archaeologists and philologists: What information do you want to share? What meta-data do they have (e.g. restriction in public usage, information for respectful usage)?
For software developers: how do you need the data to be prepared and stored: what are good/ bad examples?
For educators: What information do you need for teaching constellations of different cultures and how do you want to access it in the easiest way?
For data scientists: What do you want to do with the data, how do you analyse / compare/ evaluate them?