Astronomy Days 2015

The Raleigh Astronomy Club and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences held our Astronomy Days 2015 event in downtown Raleigh over the weekend of January 24th and 25th. Over 14,000 visitors of all ages attended this year. Our visitors enjoyed dozens of exhibits, attended presentations and participated in workshops on a wide range of astronomy topics. This year’s event had a Pluto and Outer Solar System theme with presentations covering the New Horizons mission to Pluto, Comets and the Kuiper Belt.

More than a dozen groups from around the state fielded over 40 astronomy exhibits, and provided speakers who gave close to 40 presentations and workshops. Several dozen Raleigh Astronomy Club members volunteered their time and talents to staff club exhibits and run workshops. Everyone did a great job working with the public. Crowd favorites were Solar Observing, Telescopes on Display, Astrophotography, Age/Weight on Other Planets, Exoplanets and Anatomy of a Planet. Club members also gave well attended talks on Black Holes, Driveway Astronomy, Double Stars and many other topics. We also ran our popular workshops on Getting Started in Astronomy and Astrophotography.

 
 

NASA was present with Astronaut Andrew Feustel, who gave presentations about his experiences on Shuttle missions and aboard the International Space Station. Local NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassadors gave talks on a number of topics and staffed exhibits on the next-gen Orion/SLS spacecraft, Mars and NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission.

Many thanks to museum staff for all their hard work in support of this event. And thanks to all the other participating organizations. If you could not attend Astronomy Days this year, you can learn more about the event at www.astronomydays.org
We hope to see you next year.