This was the rescheduled STEM night since the original event was cancelled because of the bad weather in January. What a night !! 900+ Students and parents attended the event and we did not have a minute of rest. Problem solving stations throughout the school and for as long as the clouds stayed away, parents and students could take a look at the sun through our solar scopes, and when the clouds covered the skies, look at some pine cones in some distant trees. Inside they learned about Mars and the Rover Curiosity and how scientist study what rocks and sand on Mars are made of. This school is producing some real astro scientists!!!
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Frank Garner and Theo Ramakers went for their first event of several, to Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge. A number of home schooling parents with their children wanted to learn more about our Sun. They learned what the Sun is made up of, how the sun generates energy, and how the energy makes its way to the surface of the sun and can create Solar storms. They learned why sunspots look dark even though they are 6000 degrees. They observed some nice prominences on the Sun and there were a nice number of Sun spots to see and a few of the students did even take the time to draw what they saw . A demonstration of the relative size and distance of Earth’s orbit from the Sun concluded the event. Everyone enjoyed the session, having learned a little more about astronomy.

CEA went for the 5th year to Anna Ruby Falls in Helen GA, to let the visitors look at the Sun and give them a little better understanding what happens on our Star. The event was moved to the backup date because of rainy days in March. A beautifull day at the Falls today and about 850 of the visitors stopped by the 6 Solar scopes and the information table and saw the sun with their own eyes and learned about what happens on the Sun as well as what happens if solar storms make their way to Earth. A great event again this year and people like it to be given the chance to observe the Sun. Two young members were there to help out: Dominick Giacobbi and Shelby Garner. When Shelby got back home she told her Daddy: “This was the funnest day I had in my life” Great Job Shelby and Dominick. Many more events to come Click the picture to go to the gallery.

Approximately 33 members and friends attended the April meeting. John Towne opened the meeting with an overview followed by the outreach summary for March by Theo Ramakers. Ken Poshedly discussed ALPO again as an introduction to Julius Benton presentation “ALPO and Saturn“. Julius is the ALPO Section Coordinator for Saturn. A great presentation followed by some interesting questions. Theo Ramakers took all on a trip through the CEA website CEAstronomy.org so that all were aquainted with the resourses available. Two members made a donation of a telescope to CEA’s outreach program, Jack Fitzmier did donate an ETX125 and Evan Phillips at 9 years became the youngest donor by donating his desktop telescope since he started to use his dad’s. This is great!!! Thanks Evan and Jack for the generous donations. Jack Fitzmier did a book review of Mike Brown’s “Why I killed Pluto” and John Towne’s very interesting “What’s Up” for April concluded a great meeting.
Following the meeting a dozen of die-hard attendees made it to the JWF to take a look at Jupiter and the Moon through the 10″ and high clouds. Never the less, a very nice session. Click thumbnail for images of the meeting.

Today was the day for Pucketts Mill solar event and the weather did cooperate The students learned how we get the energy from the sun and in what forms this comes. They learned about how the magnetic field shields us from a lot of bad emissions and how Solarstorms contribute to be able to see Northern Lights, and they also detected the UV light that changed the color of their beads. They observed the sun through H-alpha filtered scopes and whitelight and learned why sunspots look dark even though they are 6000 degrees. Some movies gave a good understanding of what happens on and in the sun. The last group also got to see Venus in bright daylight and explained why it looks like half of moon. Thanks to Mandy Collins the teacher who invited us and who reinforced what the students learned like she was part of our team Thanks Mrs. Collins. The students loved it.
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Sunspots, proms, flying arrows & flames – what a day! Frank Garner & Marie Lott led a memorable and fun event on March 26th on Jon Wood Field with 60 college students from Berkeley and Arkansas. Who knew that college students would travel cross-country to spend their spring break at Charlie Elliott? Adding to the fun was the fact that we shared the field with an archery activity, complete with moving targets! Frank decided wisely that it would be safer to move the telescopes to be behind the shooters instead of down range. To top off the afternoon, the woods around the astronomy field were set on fire as part of a “controlled burn” before the last group of students. Wow! We lost the view of a pretty crescent Venus and a daytime moon in the smoke, but no one seemed to mind. Another glorious day on Jon Wood Field.

We reached out to a number of families who were camping out at the Crooket Pines Farm in Eatonton. The skies were cloudy at first, but they gave way to some thin high cirrus clous and we were able to show them Jupiter and its moons, orion and the orion nebula and a number of clusters. They also liked the double Mizar and learned how to find North with the stars. They really enjoyed learning about the Universe and even the little girl, who was asked what she saw after looking at Jupiter, said “I saw a planet ”

Thursday afternoon, Frank and Theo went to Oxford College. We were invited by Jim Honeycut to bring Solar to the students. After a presentation about the sun using some of our tools, the astronomy class took their time to observe the sun in great detail through visible light and H-alpha telescopes. They made some nice drawings of what they saw and a few of them actually snapped an image if the Sun with their cell phones through the telescopes. We really did appreciate the session with some good questions and a lot of attention and at the end everyone was able to see how we image the sun as we actually ran some avis .

Because of the cloudy weather the observing at the Jon Wood Field had to cancelled and instead, we gave some inside presentations. The highschool students took a flight through the Solar System and learned a lot about gravey on different space objects and why it is dangerous to run fast on the moon Deimos. They learned about how we study our neighbor Mars and what it takes to take Curiosity from Earth to Mars. A variety of other topics made this a well received session despite the clouds.

We went for two days to Trip Elementary in Grayson and exposed the 4th graders a little more to astronomy, space, and space exploration. They learned inside more about astronomical concepts, the solar system and the universe, and outside they learned a lot about our solar system. They were very surprised to find out through our relative size activity, how small earth really is and how far away we are from the Sun. They also could take a look at the sun and on the second day, they even observed Venus in midday!! Thanks Frank for adding this to their program. Thanks to Jon Edwards, Frank Garner and Theo Ramakers for being there for these students. Please click the image below to go to the gallery and see the students in the activities.