Astronomy Day

by: Dave Flynn

Another successful Astronomy Day! 

Last Saturday (10/17), The Local Group and The Santa Clarita Library hosted our Fall Astronomy Day celebration at the Valencia Library.  We had around 50 people stop by for the festivities.  They enjoyed some informative lectures and activities like the scavenger hunt.  The winners were treated to some great handmade prizes.  A big round of applause to Christine Schmidt who did a great job with that activity.

There were also three lectures throughout the day.  The first was the ever-popular "How Big is Big, How Far is Far" presentation by Richard Wade.  This is always well attended and was nearly a full house.  It is a fun trip through the concepts of scale, size and distance in an effort to teach kids about the vast sizes and distances of things in the universe.

The second lecture was by Dave Flynn on the various types of telescopes astronomers use and then a workshop where the kids can make their own telescopes to keep.  They build small two-element refractors that taught them about how lenses work and challenged them to be able to focus and see things upside-down.  Yes, even through many of our professional-grade telescopes, things get flipped upside down and sideways,

Our final lecture was supposed to be on Pluto however our guest lecturer was foiled by all the mudslide activity that weekend and he couldn't safely get here.  Many thanks to Jim VanWinkle for whipping up a wonderful lecture regarding how life developed on earth and how that helps us determine what to look for when searching for extraterrestrial life.

That evening we came back and set up our telescopes in the library parking lot.  We had about 25 people show up to look at the few meager targets we could locate through the ever-increasing light pollution in town.  Even so, the enthusiastic crowd seemed to have a good time and we even had some folks bring their own telescope to join us.

The library commented that this is one of their most heavilly attended events and they really appreciate this every year.