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The Hands-on Universe (HOU) project is a technology transfer program which makes leading edge astrophysics research tools and network technologies available to high school students, and more recently, the museum public. \\ The (HOU) program allows users to request astronomical images in real time from the Leuschner Observatory, the U.C. Berkeley Astronomy Department's professional grade telescopes, over telecommunication linkages. After the CCD-images are taken the user can download them onto a PC-computer and then view and analyze the data by a powerful image processing package provided by the Hands-on Universe group.\\ One of the goals of this project is to link participants and scientists by micro-computers and electronic networks in genuinely collaborative "apprenticeship" style interactions. The HOU program includes the development of astronomy based science curriculum units for use in high school classrooms. In these curricula the user friendly image request, image processing and data transfer software are applied in a way which is very close or even identical to how research is performed presently. \\ The Hands-on Universe group is also engaged in the development of an astrophysics based museum exhibit and a HOU program for planetariums.\\
