John Towne and Theo went to Summerour for our fourth year of participation in their Astronomy Night event. About 80 students and parents learned about NASA’s Curiosity rover and outside they were able to observe Jupiter and some very interesting craters of the moon. A glimpse at M42 gave them a good feel of how stars are born. Click the thumbnail for more pictures.

Several of us went out to the dove Fields at Charlie Elliott to look for the comet again. This time it was a beautiful sight through binos where you could see the comet together with very tiny crescent moon.
Click here again to link to an animation of the setting duo and click the thumbnail for a larger image.

We received some nice publicity in a number of local Newspapers about our Comet outreach. The Gwinnett Daily Post, The Rockdale/Newton Citizen, The Covington News, the Walton Tribune and the Montecello News covered the events. Thanks to all reportes who picked up on this. Click the image to link to one of the articles.

Frank and Theo went to the Dunwoody Nature Center to explain a little about astronomy to the scouts of Den 8. A great den with some very clever kids and great parents! They grasped pretty good what we explained to them. It was too bad that it was a cloudy night and we could not let them see the beauty of the nightsky, but I am sure they will have a chance to do that some time. Thanks for inviting us to your meeting! Click the image to go to the gallery.
Clear Skies,
Theo Ramakers

Yesterday, we finished our three day event at Memorial Middle School and despite the fact that because of the cloudy weather only approx. 30 students had an opportunity to observe the Sun, a total of 265 6th grade students learned a lot about what happens at our Star. Inside as well as outside activities gave them insight how the sun works and how the storms it produces can affect life on earth. In addition, they learned what shooting stars or meteors are and how to identify meteorites. They felt real tiny small as they realized how big our solar system is compared to our little earth.
A great 3 day event at a great school with great teachers and students.
Clear Skies,
Theo Ramakers

The cloud cover on the second day of the event was a little better. In fact we saw the sun every now and then, and the best thing was that all students of the fourth session today were able to see the nice active regions and the very nice prominence. Inside presentations gave the students a better understanding of what happens on our closesed star and they learned what can happen if some of these solar storms are directed at Earth. Click the image to see the gallery.

This is our fourth year at Memorial Middle School in Conyers. Our scheduled program for day 1 was to teach the students some facts about the Sun, and show them how it affects our lives on Earth. In addition we intended for them to observe the sun through our solar telescopes. Unfortunaltely we had a rainy day and instead of observing the sun we did some activities related to it. Click the image to see the gallery.

A beautiful day to have an astronomy meeting. About 20 people attended the meeting, with one new face. (We like new faces) Theo reported on last month’s outreach events, and the events planned in the communities for March around Comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARSS. During the meeting an award ceremony was held to recognize those who had participated in 5 or more outreach events during 2012. 8 Individuals received the certificate and the NSN Pin, giving more than 900 hours of volunteer work, driving more than 11,500 miles to participate in 83 events. Marie re-introduced us again to the Virtual Telescope and the meeting finished with Jon Towne’s great presentation of “what’s Up“. After the meeting we had a whopping 20 telescopes and binos on tripods on the Jon Wood Field to observe the night sky. (Click the image to go to the gallery)
Clear skies, theo

Our fourth year of participation in Science/Tech night at Puckett’ Mill. We were very happy with the attendance of our sessions out of the 600 attendants.  120  Students and parents were very interested in learning the steps involved in bringing a rover of the size of Curiosity from Earth to Mars and the scientific research the rover will do. Because of the weather, the stargazing was replaced with a session about Comets in which they were shown what a comet is made up of.  Thanks to Jeff, Kiernan and Theo for giving their time and effort to make this such a success.
Clear skies,
Theo

This morning Frank and Theo went to Sagamore Hills elementary school for our 5th outreach session of 2013. A large number of students, parents and volunteers of “Hands on Atlanta” attended the lecture with short movies, and also learned about the relative size of the solar system. Finally they all took a look at the sun with some nice prominences in H-alpha and white light. A great event. Please click the image to link to the gallery.