School Star Party

When I pulled up outside the elementary school on the west side of San Antonio, there were large groups of kids milling around with "Young Astronaut" printed on their school tee shirts. It looked like a rainbow because each school had their own individual uniform, and there must have been a couple dozen schools represented.

I found that my friends in the San Antonio Astronomical Association were set up behind the elementary school. We had six scopes between us and about 8 or 9 volunteers. I learned that the kids, who were going through a number of activities that evening would come out to our astronomy field in groups of about 100, and we would have about 7 groups. Each group would try to get through all six scopes in the fifteen minutes they had, before a whistle sounded and we got a new group.

I was there with the Helotescope, a home-made, wood-box scope that the reader may have read about in these pages. The 30x scope was pointed at Orion's great nebula - M42. I usually had 5-10 kids or parents lined up waiting to take a little look at this wonder all evening.

My jingle ran about like this, "What you are looking at is the Great Orion Nebula. If you see the three stars of Orion's belt, the telescope is looking at the tip of the sword that is hanging from the left side of his belt. When you look through the eyepiece, you will see a group of three stars - and here I held my hand up so that the palm was cupped toward the ground - in a shape about like my left hand. If you look really close at the star that would be here, at the base of my thumb on the left side, you will see that it is actually a group of four stars. They are in a cloudy bit of dust that makes them look misty. What you are seeing is an area where stars are being born. If you can see those four stars, it is a little like looking into a basket with four newborn little puppies in it."

I repeated my monologue about 4 times per group of students, and the students changed out four times an hour. I also told the kids and their teachers/parents that their club could build a telescope about like this little one.

About nine out of ten of the students saw what I was talking about and I frequently got "wow!" as the comment. A few kids struggled to see the image through the eyepiece. A few of the kids were much more interested in being outside in the dark than in seeing through the scope. They were kids, after all.

It gave me a little warm feeling in my heart to have been out there showing a lot of kids that had never before looked through a telescope what a star nursery looks like. Other members of the SAAA were pointing out open clusters, the crescent Moon, crescent Venus, and later on - Comet Lulin.

This is the sort of activity that I would have never figured out how to organize on my own. As it turns out, a couple of our members are wonderfully talented at getting into schools to show them the sky. It takes marketing, persistence, dedication, and organization. Certainly I would not be able to get out occasionally if Don And Keith were not working the issue all year long. This is one of the great parts of being a member of a local club.

While this sort of activity does little to increase my understanding of the sky, I think it is useful in the long run in molding young people who have known the importance of the sky since they were kids. I may need them to vote for a space telescope one day, or to get the parking lot lights turned off at the neighborhood McDonalds. Kids that know something about the sky are good kids.

Anyway, it made me feel a little better about life to know that I had done just a little to help some school children be exposed to the sky. After all, someone who calls themselves a "young astronaut" should have a memory of looking up and seeing the stars.