Around the world people are fascinated by the night sky, space and astrophysics. We believe that transient astrophysical phenomena, i.e. the most violent cosmic explosions, are a very interesting starting point to trigger discussions about these topics. With this aim we use the Astro-COLIBRI platform to engage with this interested public and astronomy enthusiasts. Given that the platform is freely accessible by everybody, we encourage discussions about interesting events and even follow-up observations within the amateur astronomy community. At recent public exhibitions like Explor’Espace and Ciel&Espace, we already showed that tools like Astro-COLIBRI have great potential to engage astronomy enthusiasts. A number of upcoming events are already planned. For example, we are invited to participate in the "amateur-professional" workshop of the Société Astronomique de France (SAF) during the Journées SF2A, we participate in the "Fête de la Science" (Paris-Saclay University), in the "Ciel&Espace" days, and many more Astro-COLIBRI has also already been included in the official tools supported by the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and we continue to work towards improving the interaction and exchanges between professional and amateur astronomers. One such example is a first Astro-COLIBRI session that was organised in February 2022 by SAF (link).
It is clear that time domain astronomy is not limited to huge telescopes and professional astronomers. Everybody can participate in citizen science projects! To facilitate observations of transient phenomena we set up a collaboration between Astro-COLIBRI and the Unistellar citizen science program on "cosmic cataclysms". Astro-COLIBRI distributes alerts on interesting cosmic events detected by the ZTF observatory and that are accessible by the digital Unistellar telescopes. A dedicated link in the Astro-COLIBRI app allows to start immediate follow-up observations with the Unistellar eVscope or eQuinox telescopes. All crucial parameters will be set automatically. Data analysis and subsequent publications are handled in collaboration with the SETI Institute. See the official announcement for details.