(This article appeared in the first quarter 2007 STAR Newsletter. -I)
Astronomy Days 2007
By Ian Hewitt
It was January again (seems to come around every year) and you know what that means! New Year’s? Playoff Games? No! Astronomy Days!!! This year, RAC had another great event and you all deserve a big hand of applause! This year everyone focused on updating many of the exhibits to help keep the event fresh and it resulted in an attendance of 16,695 people (not that we were counting). That’s over twice what we had last year, even with the rain on Sunday. RAC received a lot of great comments from museum visitors, the folks from NASA, and the museum staff. All were very impressed with our exhibits and enthusiasm.
Of course, the busy weekend started with the traditional Friday night lecture. This year one of NASA’s very distinguished ex-astronauts Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz was the speaker. In addition to an impressive space flight record, he was also head of NASA’s advanced propulsion laboratory. He now runs a private company carrying on the work he did at NASA. He gave an excellent talk on propulsion and there were many questions. He, along with several other NASA folks, went out to eat with the club at the Raleigh GAS club meeting afterwards.
This year RAC members created a number of new exhibits for the event. Ralph James, Brian Reasor, and Jim Dellapenna revamped and greatly expanded the Solar System exhibit with new materials and examples for the public. Steve Goodman, Pat Moore, and Bill Webster put a tremendous amount of work into a Speed of Light (or Distance of Light, depending on who you ask!) demonstration. This is a very cool hands-on station that demonstrates the relative speed of light by comparing it to well known objects. The speed of light is a very important concept and, of course, many people know the measurement, but at the same time most people have troubling understanding the relative magnitude of large numbers. Relating this concept to real world objects is helpful for understanding. The exhibit features a globe with LEDs around it. Different buttons would show how far certain objects traveled over a certain time. They were a car traveling for ten hours, a plane traveling for five hours, the space shuttle traveling for fifteen minutes, and the speed of light in one second. Of course, only one person in the audience has any real experience with the space shuttle (Dr. Chang-Diaz), but everyone knows it goes very fast and we wanted to show that’s peanuts to the speed of light. It is important to note that this exhibit could never have been built without significant support from Pat Moore Construction and generosity of SunStone Circuits.
Steve Izzo and Mike Etkin worked on a updated Astrophotography display including some live demonstrations. This exhibit featured many stellar (ahem…) photographs and we are considering breaking this into two exhibits next year! Of course, there was solar observing aplenty, although not during the rain on Sunday.
Of course, RAC also received a lot of help from our partners in this event. Once again, NASA generously provided support for the event. In addition to a grant which helped finance all the cool new exhibits we built, they also sent teams from the Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA Langely. They provided two great exhibits – a spectacular multimedia exhibit on the next generation spacecraft, and a virtual globe that many thought was one of the coolest things there (and that’s something when you consider the multimedia exhibit had a 10-foot screen).
The Triangle Robotics Club started working on a replica of the Mars Exploration Rovers. This year, it was just the under-carriage and it was used to drive over willing young participants. Ostensibly, this was to demonstrate the flexibility of the design, but most of the kids thought it was just cool! Cary Space Camp was also present and took many pictures of kids in replica shuttle survival suits. This year the NOAA had booth on space weather. Last, but not least, Progress Energy provided a technician and infrared camera for some really cool demonstrations in one of the classrooms.
As always, none of this would be possible without the terrific volunteer efforts of our members. In addition to the folks who developed the exhibits, we had a lot of other members put in the time to answer questions and educate the public. They are: Urvil Mehta, Yosh Mehta, Dan Lamson, Darice Frey, Dick Ossowski, Sheila Bayer, Betty Ann O’brien, Richard Bodnar, Dean Herring, Susan Herring, Chuck Jaynes, Jim Pressley , Jerry Watson, John McCune, Michael Keefe, Joe Pedit, Robert Fitzgerald, Mark Lang, Bill Russell, Susan Russell, David Martin, Grace Martin, John Westall, Ken Westall, Mike Foster. If I missed anyone I apologize.
Another great event for the community and the Raleigh Astronomy Club! In addition to the photos in this article, more photos can be found online at:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/ncmns_events/album/576460762387353933#page1
Thanks again to all who helped!
