I had the opportunity to show Josh O’Brien how we image the Sun, and to prove that he learned what I was talking about he made an image himself. After capturing the raw avi, we went inside and I showed how we process the data. Here is Josh’s image captured by him and also processed by him in AV2 and Photoshop. Well done Josh!!! I love it when these students really like science
Clear Skies,
Theo Ramakers

This was our 7th annual outreach event for the Garden Club of Georgia. About 18 youngsters and 7 adults spend the evening on the Jon Wood Field to observe what all is “up” there. CEA was represented with 12 individuals using 9 telescopes. We started the evening off by visually observing and explaining what we could see. Then it went to the scopes. The conditions were not that good, but all were able to see Mars, Saturn, M57, M4, M13, Albereo and at the end even the Moon, although some had to look through some serious clouds to make out the craters. A great evening again and thanks to Jack Fitzmier, Dan Schmitt, Marie and Tim Lott, Frank and Shelby Garner with her friend, Valorie and David Whalen, Jim Lancaster and his wife, and myself for showing these kids “our Universe”
Clear Skies,
Theo

The Captain Planet Foundation asked us to show the night sky to a group of educators participating in one of their many workshops.  The goal:  educate the educators so they can take their new-found knowledge back to the classroom.

On the theme “Just a little goes a long way …”

We hosted an outreach session for 15 teachers who were attending a Captain Planet Foundation workshop at CE.  The skies were not very good — Polaris never showed up, and as the evening moved on it clouded over totally.  But our intrepid CE volunteers managed to show our guests the Moon, Mars, Saturn, M13, the Ring, several double stars, a few other celestial objects.  For seasoned observers, not a very good night.  But I got this message from Karan, the Captain Planet coordinator:

The last outreach event of the school year 14/15. Frank and I brought the Sun over Covington for Mrs. Henderson’s students. The Sun did cooperate and the students observed the Sun through white light and H-alpha scopes and made drawings of what they saw. They learned about the relative distances in the Solar System by making a scale model of the solar system and walked Earth in its orbit using the poster at the side of the PU and a scale Earth. A great event to close the school year for us!! Click the image to go to the gallery.

Today I went to Veterans Memorial Middle in Covington to bring Space Exploration and Astronomy a little closer to the students. Using examples the students discovered that it does not need a lot of energy to overcome the gravity from Mars’ moons. A study of some of the features of Mars, learning how a telescope works by using our kit, and a movie about waitlessness and liquid finished the program. Great Students and a great Teacher!

This year again we were invited to come to Trickum Middle School and bring astronomy and space exploration to its 6th grade students. This school is the most difficult school for us since we are addressing 24 classes or approximately 660 students with our outreach during the three days with 4 classroom hours each day. So we are handling two classes at the same time. The first half of the classroom hour, one class is outside while the other attends the presentations inside and the second half of the hour the other way around. Monday Frank, Valorie, David and Theo participated, Tuesday David and Frank could not make it so Bob Jacoby jumped in and on Wednesday, Valorie, Mr. Krabs, and me were spearheading the activities while the clouds worked with us except the very last class. Thanks everyone for being there!! Thanks also again to Mr. Patterson, who again this year asked us to come out and bring “the favorite program of the year” to this school. Also thanks to the teachers Ms Kuhl, Peters, and Mr. Lucy, Ewanowski and Masters for keeping the students on their best behavior.

This was our yearly participation in their JAKES Day event. Thanks to Bob Jacoby, David Whalen, Frank Garner and Theo Ramakers for coming out to represent CEA in the largest yearly event that CEWC puts on. We had a large number of visitors to peek at the sun through a light cloud deck and to learn and see how telescopes work and how to identify of rocks come from earth or out of space. Unfortunaltely the clouds doubled up and made the sun disappear later in the event. Some of the kids and adults were very interested and will show up at our observing sessions and maybe even at our meetings.
Thanks Bob, David, Frank and Theo to show CEWC that we really appreciate what they do for us.
Clear skies,
Theo Ramakers

It was time again to bring some astronomy to McConnell Middle school in Grayson. Frank could not make it so Bob jumped in and Steve came for two of the classes to help Theo. Thanks guys!. A great school with great Science teachers! In the classroom we took them on a flight through the Solar system, and talked about the moons of the planets giving special attention to Phobos and Deimos. Comparing the gravity on Earth, Mars and Deimos made it clear to the students why you should not move too fast on this moon. Outside they observed the Sun through white light and H-alpha filtered scopes and saw prominences, sunspots and some filaments. Thanks Mrs. Sandidge and Mr. Yoder for inviting us again and bring science a little closer to 129 science students!

We went out to CEWC’s Outdoor Discovery School which hosted the Excellent Montessori school. Frank and Shelby Garner and Theo Ramakers dis some inside presentations and activities for the group. As one of the activities they made a scale model of the Solar system and learned how telescopes work and invert what you see through them. After sunset it went out to the JW Astronomy Field to observe some of the night sky beauties. The students and parents took a close up look at the moon, they saw Jupiter and four of its moons, as well as Mars. They learned how to find the North Star using the big dipper as a helper. A great group again with eager to learn students. Click the image below to link to the gallery.

We had a blast doing solar outreach at the Sharon Shenanigans. Frank Garner, Erik Benner & Marie Lott had 4 solar scopes going all day, sharing the sun with about 800 people in Sharon, GA (a town with a population of 105, so quite a turn out!). It was a beautiful spring day filled with sunspots & proms, great BBQ, pecan pie & sounds of homegrown music – tons of fun!