Stargazing

Rem and I recently enjoyed an evening out at Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland.  It was a fun and educational visit.

I was fascinated by many of the exhibits.  Some were aimed at a younger audience but Rem and I both found them interesting.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of living on the International Space Station – their schedules, food, working weightless and more in the exhibit “Beyond Blastoff”.

Another exhibit, “Touch the Sun” has some incredible real time close-up images of the sun.

Chabot has a ‘dinner and a movie’ program that included entrance to the center and all the exhibits, dinner (with candlelight and flowers), the Planetarium show (if you attend the earlier dinner) and entry to a movie, which that night was Men in Black!

When the movie ended, shortly before 9PM, it was just getting dark enough outside for stargazing.

We were able to view the moon, stars and planets through one of the three giant telescopes that are part of the center as well as several other smaller telescopes set up by hobbyist, amateur astronomers and students.  The moon was stunning through the lens of the telescope.

We also saw Saturn (though I didn’t see much in the way of rings beyond a fuzzy blur of gasses) and a pair of stars, one shining gold and the other blue.

Chabot is not that far from home but we just hadn’t made it over there until now.  If you live in the area, please consider a visit.  Here is a link to other observatories around the country. Take a look and see if there is one close enough for a visit: US Observatories.

For another kind of stargazing, we went to see recently unveiled statues in a new park in my hometown of San Anselmo.

Wise Yoda.

Indiana Jones, from the movie created in San Anselmo in 1974.  However, my mom and I rather like the idea that we have a statue of Harrison Ford in town.

It is a sweet little park..

Thank you for coming by.

Day 5: Paper Moon

Day 5: Paper Moon.  This is my take on a page that caught my eye on Pinterest. It is from the blog “La Chaquetita de Punto”  but I don’t know who the artist is.

I collected bits of paper with different text and numbers, the Periodic Table, some old pages from books including textbooks, music, a Scantron, a sky chart from an Astronomy book and more.  Some pieces were white so I dipped them in tea and let them dry.

During my lunch break, I collaged the background using Mat Medium .  After dinner I completed the skyline and finished with the moon.

For 2012, Day 5, I did this easy project: Tape Dispenser Before and After

In 2011, Day 5, I never got the hang of: Shrinky Dink Rings

I’m glad you checked out my blog today!

Eclipse

Tiny image of a crescent is to the right of the arrow.

We saw the eclipse tonight – well, as none of us had welding glasses or other appropriate eclipse-viewing gear, what we saw was the projected image of the sun partially blocked by the moon.

Witnessing the alignment of three celestial bodies (Sun,Moon & Earth) was pretty cool.

It was a busy day of running errands and I hadn’t really made any plans but as the time got close, Rem found some information on pinhole viewing on the Exploratorium’s website.  We went for the quick and easy directions: one piece of card stock with a square cut out of it.  A piece of foil taped over the square and a pinhole poked in the foil.  That was our projector.  A piece of white card stock was our screen.

Easy peasy.

It was windy out and we learned it was easier to use card stock with the pinhole and project the image onto a wall.

Can you see the crescent?

Even easier was the suggestion to align your fingers in a crosshatch pattern and look at the light coming through the resulting pinholes.

You can see blurry little crescents formed as the semi-blocked sunlight shines through my fingers onto a wall.

Our little science moment!  It was fun, it was interesting and we were talking with our neighbors, a nice benefit.

The site also mentioned looking at light coming through tree leaves.  We first noticed this on the sidewalk but then our attention was caught by the play of light and shadow on a wall across the street.

Not a dramatic “ring of fire” photo, but as the moon and sun got into alignment and the sky darkened, it was pretty cool to view this natural phenomena.

What was your eclipse experience?

Thanks for stopping by.