Remember a few months ago when I told you guys about going to the planetarium and observatory with my brother's Cub Scout troop?
Yes. And I told you I was going to become a Star Guide, which means I'll help out at Star Parties, telling the kids (and now we have adults and even seniors coming too) how to use the telescopes and helping them find things in the night sky.
On Tuesday I did my first star guide training!
Who the other star guides are:
A guy with a small head and a big nose, who's name I forgot. He was the first star guide and has been there for 4 years. He did some astrophotography using the observatory telescope and entered it in a big photography contest.
Then there's a kid from my grade, John. He's the king of the nerds. Been there for two years.
Another newbie like me, a few years older, was positively shaking with excitement. I forgot his name too, which is stupid because we all had name tags.
And finally me, the first girl star guide. (Mr. And Mrs. Pauly have been trying to tell everyone old enough to use the telescopes but young enough to still speak "kid language" about how they could become a star guide, but it seems that only boys have wanted too, until now.)
What we did:
We went over what to do at each star party. The boring part was setting up the cones so the hypothetical people (this was a training after all) wouldn't try to park down the driveway.
When things got a degree more exciting was moving the telescopes out and finding where to put them and how to use them.
The coolness was bumped up a few notches when we had to align the lasers. These lasers are used to point the telescopes. When it gets dark, you can see its green line extending far away into the sky (we have to be careful of planes with those lasers. If you point it at them you get arrested and a hefty fine. These can damage your little eyeballs pretty badly.) and if you were paying attention, you'll approximately know where the thing you're looking for is supposed to be, so you move the telescope around until the lazer is pointing to the right place, turn it off, and look through. Bam! You found the wild duck cluster! Hopefully. Anyway, they have to be aligned so that where they're pointing is the same place where we're looking.
After that, we went down to the planetarium where Mr. Pauly (we'll just call him Tom, now, ok?) showed us all of the things we were supposed to be able to find, and help the people who come to the star parties be able to find.
We had to find each thing using every telescope, so we could learn how to use all of them. So we (as in me and the other newbie) found Polaris, the North Star, the star that doesn't move, by simply pointing (with our handheld lasers, of course. Which are not to be used as light sabers. No no no.) Then we found the Summer Triangle, comprised of 3 bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair. (Just a constellation again, only need your eyeballs, nothing fancy)
Deneb is part of a constellation called the Cygnus, and it is the tail of the bird, while Alberio, in about the middle of the triangle, is the head. Alberio is really a binary star system. Two stars are orbiting around eachother. When you look through the telescopes you can see the two "close" together. One is orange and one is blue.
Finished with Alberio, we found the wild duck cluster: hundreds of young stars 6,000 light years away. That looked pretty cool through the big telescopes. (We only got around to finding those few consolations and the mere two things through the telescopes because the clouds were starting to come and it was 11:00 anyway.) When I say big telescope, I mean small cannon. It was around 4 and 1/2 feet tall with a 15 inch diameter, if I remember correctly. It's just a big cylinder so it catches a lot of light. This one uses mirrors instead of lenses. Light comes in, hits the mirror at the bottom, is bounced back up to a small mirror in the middle at the top again, which bounces it to the eyepiece. It's really important to have those mirrors all line up perfectly, which is another one of our jobs before star parties.
There are lots of kinds of telescopes. Two of them are the big ones I explained above, plus two more similar to that, but a lot smaller and metal. Their lasers didn't like being cold, so we didn't use them much. Then there's the kind everyone immediately thinks of when you say "telescope"; the classic tube on a tri-pod. But fancier. The tube bit is fatter and shorter. There are knobs you can fine tune where you want to point it. When you get really fancy, sometimes you need counterweights. We had one that needed weights and a car battery, because it had a remote control sort of thing used to move it around. (It might have also been used for astrophotography, but I really don't remember. Lucky me there's another training in August.)
IM SO EXCITED.
We all have vests and landyards with the logo and our names. I feel so professional.
And there was cookies and coffee and astronomical exuberance, with Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Star Treck references flying thick and fast.
I had a good time.
~Gwen
