In
May 1609 the Gentleman of Florence
and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua, Galileo
Galilei, received a letter about a new
device called a spyglass. This new
invention could miraculously make distant objects seem as if they were
nearby. Galileo used his technical
skills as a mathematician and craftsman to build several of these
devices,
which he called a perspicillum, without ever seeing one for
himself. At first Galileo used this miraculous device
to make money, but he soon turned it to the night sky and changed the
course of
astronomy forever. One of Galileo’s
colleague’s,
Giovanni Demisiani, suggested this amazing instrument be called the
telescope -
a Greek term meaning “far-seeing”.
Four hundred years
later the world is celebrating Galileo’s ground breaking
discoveries with the
telescope by declaring 2009 the
International
Year of Astronomy
(IYA). In honor of Galileo’s achievements and the
IYA, the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society (KAS) held its biggest
Astronomy Day
ever on May 30th. Planning
for Astronomy Day 2009 (AD2K9) started before last year’s
event. Right from the start we knew we wanted three
things to make AD2K9 special. First, we
wanted a special keynote speaker - someone to help draw a big
crowd. Secondly, we wanted “Galileo”
himself to make
a special appearance. Finally, we wanted
to give away telescopes. Not everything
went according to plan, but AD2K9 was an amazing success nonetheless.
Achieving these
ambitious goals required some historic fundraising. The KAS
was going to have to write its first
ever grant in order to pay for some of our plans. In the end
our grant proposal was approved by
the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation. I
cannot thank
Molly Williams
enough
for all her additions and suggestions to our grant
proposal. It’s unfortunate that Molly
wasn’t even able
to attend Astronomy Day.
Frank
Severance was also a huge
help
in
obtaining funding. He convinced the
WMU
Department of Physics and the
Michigan
Space Grant Consortium to make
generous
contributions to our event. Finally, I’d
like to thank all those KAS members that made some very generous
donations that
helped us achieve the rest of our goals. You have no idea how
much
your contribution meant to me. It
makes me proud to be a member of the KAS.
The KAS has always been
fortunate when it comes to its members volunteering for Astronomy Day,
but this
year stood out above all the rest. Thirty-three members
volunteered their time to help make sure
everything
ran smoothly on
May 30th. Many
of those members
made more than
one
contribution, so
I’ll do my
best to give credit where it’s due. Please forgive
me if I
miss anything or anyone in this report.
Finally, after 400
years in the making, over a year of planning, and months
of preparation
May 30th
arrived. Most of our activities took
place at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum from 9 am – 4
pm. One of
the advantages to the museum (besides its central location) is that
visitors
must walk through the courtyard to enter the building. This
took them right by our intrepid solar
observers. This year we finally faced
the cruel reality of solar minimum and only set up telescopes equipped
with hydrogen
alpha filters.
Jim Kurtz
shared views of the nearest star
with his Tele Vue NP101
and Coronado SolarMax 40 filter.
Tim Kurtz
used my Tele Vue
Pronto and
SolarMax 40 filter.
Kerry
Robbert (volunteering for the
first
time in 6 years) setup
his Coronado PST.
Roger
Williams brought his Coronado
MaxScope 60 and
Dave Woolf
used the
KAS’s
PST. Each
one of our solar observers volunteered
the entire day and there were some nice prominences to be
seen. Mostly cloudy skies spoiled solar observing
in the morning, but later gave way to mostly clear conditions.
Visitors entering the
museum were greeted by fellow Astronomy Day Coordinator,
Jean DeMott,
and KAS Vice President
Mike
Sinclair in the
morning. KAS President
Jack
Price
joined Jean at the greeting table in the afternoon. Jean did
a tremendous job on the two welcome
signs that informed visitors of our exciting day of
activities. Lifetime member
Phyllis Buskirk
volunteered
for
Astronomy Day for the first
time. She helped out at the freebie
table during the morning.
Beverly
Byle took over for Phyllis
in
the afternoon. Both did an excellent job
of encouraging young and old alike to help themselves to some free
goodies
provided by NASA and
Astronomy
magazine.
To help cover some of
our expenses we setup a sales table featuring all the merchandise from
the
SkyShop.
We also sold
copies of our
keynote speaker’s two critically acclaimed books,
Bad
Astronomy and
Death from
the Skies. The
author was available
to sign copies of his books throughout the afternoon. Sales
could have been a little stronger
(couldn’t they always), but they did cover Phil
Plait’s travel expenses.
[Autographed
copies are still available.]
That’s what I
was hoping for to begin
with.
Mike Chaffee
and
Bill
Nigg
covered the sales table in the morning.
Amie Harpe
and
Stephanie
Stratton took over for the
guys in the afternoon.
Naturally, our theme for
this year’s event was “Galileo & the
Telescope”. This was reflected in two of our
displays. The first was called “Galileo:
The Starry Messenger” and highlighted Galileo’s
monumental telescopic
discoveries first announced in
The
Starry
Messenger in March 1610.
After enjoying the display visitors
could help
themselves to copies of
The Starry
Messenger. Thanks to
Dick
Gillespie
for copying
and
assembling the booklets. They turned out
fabulous and even though it’s 400 years old,
Galileo’s small treatise is still
a great read today. The other topical
display was called “Meet the
Telescopes”. Three of the
most common types of amateur telescopes were on display
with a poster setup next to each showing how they work and their
advantages and
disadvantages. Tim Kurtz supplied the
refractor and Mike Sinclair setup KAMSC’s 8-inch
Schmidt-Cassegrain. The Cave 8-inch Newtonian reflector on
display was provided by the KVM Planetarium. I have found
memories
of using that telescope to observe the aftermath
of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter in July 1994.
Next was our brand new
KAS Member Astrophotography traveling display. We’ve
been
meaning to put something like this together for
quite a while
and the timing seemed right this year. My
deepest appreciation goes to
Jim
Kurtz,
Bill Nigg,
and
Roger
Williams
for
donating their best photographs for the
display. We’re going
to get a lot of use out of this
display in the years to come. The last
display was provided by the International Dark-Sky Association and
– naturally
– dealt with light pollution. Let’s hope
at least one visitor learned something about our vanishing night skies
and
shielded their porch light when they got home. Jean was again
invaluable with helping me add some pizzazz to all our
displays. She always makes me work harder than I want
to, but it’s always worth it in the end.
We had some major
attractions at Astronomy Day 2009, but the heart and soul of the event
was
still the hands-on activities. This
year’s event featured four activities in all. The
first was
the cardboard refracting telescope kits. These
were the telescopes we planned to get
when we first learned that 2009 would be the International Year of
Astronomy. Then we heard about the marvelous
Galileoscopes. I
placed our order for
these amazing telescope kits about an hour after the web site came
online on
February 20th. Unfortunately,
due to production delays and the huge demand, we didn’t
receive them on
time. We had planned to order the old
Project STAR telescope kits, but received an offer we
couldn’t refuse. Dr. Stephen Pompea, chair of the
Galileoscope
Project and the Project Director for the U.S. International Year of
Astronomy,
offered to send us some of these telescope kits for FREE! He
saved us a tremendous amount of money and we’re
eternally grateful. The morning crew at
the telescope table included
John
Miller
and
Bill
Van Dien.
Dave
Woolf also helped in the
morning when it was too cloudy for
solar
observing. The afternoon telescope crew
consisted of
Dick Gillespie
and
Don
Stilwell. They
were all
very busy throughout the day
and helped build over 100 kits in all.
Two other hands-on
activities were KAS Planispheres and Big Dipper
Clocks. It’s
been a while since we’ve done
planispheres during Astronomy Day, but the newer ones are better than
the previous
version.
Daniall Poulsen
and
Carol
Van Dien covered the
planisphere table in the
afternoon. They
were relieved by
Becky Csia
and
Jackie
Gillespie in the
afternoon. The Big
Dipper Clocks were new this year and I think they turned out pretty
well.
Susan
Bond and
Norm Terry
helped kids
assemble Big Dipper Clocks during the morning shift, while
Bob
& Barb Havira took
over during the afternoon. The
fourth hands-on activity was provided by
the Kingman Museum from Battle Creek. Jennifer Sellers, an
educator at Kingman,
setup a “Life on Mars” detection
activity. Thanks to KAS members
John Grace
and
Jason
Hanflik for
helping
Jennifer in the morning and afternoon, respectfully. Thanks
again to all our hands-on volunteers.
Several years ago I
received a request from an actor/educator named
Michael
Francis. He wanted me
to add a link to his site from
my
“
Personal
Pages of Astronomers” web
page. Naturally, I checked the link out and saw that Michael
travels around
the country putting on performances as Galileo. This looked
really
cool and I knew it would come in handy one
day. As soon as I started putting AD2K9 together I
knew the time had come to bring “Galileo” to
Kalamazoo. Boy was it worth the wait! Michael put on three
amazing shows at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm in the
KVM’s Mary Jane Stryker Theater. If you
missed Michael’s show then you missed something really
special.
Michael used his
extensive theatrical experience and science background to bring Galileo
to life
in an entertaining, interactive performance called
The Starry
Messenger. Adapted
from Galileo's short treatise by the
same
name, Michael crafted a dramatic presentation (complete with 17th
century
costume), much like the lectures that made Galileo the toast of
universities
and royal courts. Using humor and audience participation, Galileo
introduced
his marvelous telescope, revealing his amazing discoveries first
reported in
The Starry Messenger
in 1610 and inspired
his audience to examine the wonders of nature.
In all about 450 people
attended our
activities at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, which came to a close at
4pm. The KAS
would like to thank long-time KAS member and KVM Planetarium
Coordinator Eric
Schreur, along with the rest of the entire museum staff, for their
support. We’re especially grateful for
the free planetarium programming the museum offered throughout the
day. Astronomy Day took place one day after the 50th
anniversary of the planetarium’s debut in Kalamazoo.
The museum allowed us to
leave much of our
materials there
overnight, so that made clean-up a little easier. Several of
us then headed over to Food Dance
where we had dinner with Phil Plait and Michael Francis. We
were in a terrible rush to head out to the
Nature Center,
so a leisurely dinner with our special guests was not to
be. When
I arrived at the Nature Center both
Bob Cox
and
Dennis
Stuart
were already collecting tickets for our keynote presentation.
Jean DeMott
and
Roger
Williams quickly setup
another greeting table and welcomed our visitors.
The
keynote presentation of Astronomy Day 2009 was given by “The
Bad Astronomer”
Dr. Phil Plait. Phil made a name for
himself through his
Bad Astronomy
web
site, which is devoted to airing
out myths and misconceptions in
astronomy and
related topics. Phil turned the popular
web site into a critically acclaimed book by the same name in
2002. The web site evolved into an award winning
blog,
which is now done through
Discover
magazine’s web site. In 2008
Phil
published his second book,
Death
from the
Skies! and became President
of the James Randi Educational
Foundation,
a
non-profit educational foundation dedicated to promoting critical
thinking.
The
title of Phil’s presentation was called – you
guessed it –
Bad Astronomy. He
began by
tackling the myth that first led him on his journey: eggs can only be
setup on
end during the vernal equinox. Phil had
no problem standing an egg on end in front of those in
attendance. Phil covered much of the background on this
egg-standing myth, which is covered in detail in the first chapter of
Bad Astronomy. The
heart of the talk was pointing out the
numerous scientific errors in several Hollywood movies
and television shows. The first, and
perhaps the worst, was
Armageddon. Several
clips from this
joke-of-a-movie were
played; including one scene where it was raining on the airless killer
asteroid! Phil was actually pleased with
the scene from
Deep Impact
were the
comet crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and the deadly
after effects such as a massive tsunami. Another clip that
wasn’t entirely
wrong came from – believe it or not –
The
Simpson’s. It
was the episode in
which Bart discovers a comet that’s going to crash into
Springfield
(an amazing coincidence to say the least).
Most of the comet harmlessly burns up in the atmosphere and lands at
Bart’s feet. He picks up the slightly
warm fragment and places it in his pocket. A meteorite that
crashed to the earth would only be slightly warm to
the
touch, since it spent the past few billion years in cold space and only
seconds
in the atmosphere.
Phil’s presentation
was a great
success. We had 150
seats setup in the Cooper’s Glen
Auditorium and all but 7 were filled.
Many of those that attended the keynote presentation stayed for
Phil’s
sky talk in the amphitheater. Phil gave
a 20 minute presentation highlighting some of the objects
we’d be observing
during the evening and some of the science behind them. Phil
was an all-around nice guy and very easy
to work worth. I was afraid he wouldn’t
be willing to give the sky talk in addition to signing books at the
museum and
the keynote presentation at the Nature Center.
Kirk
Korista deserves a great deal
of thanks for acting as
Phil’s
chaperon and
chauffeur during the weekend. I’d also
like to thank Rose Norwood and the rest of the Kalamazoo Nature Center
staff for hosting our evening activities.
The Nature Center
has been our closest partner for several years and we’re very
grateful for
that. Thanks also go out to new KAS member
Kevin
Jung for taking pictures
throughout the day.
The
final act of Astronomy Day 2009 was the Public Observing
Session. Attendance was very high, since many that
attended Phil’s talks hung around to enjoy the night
sky. This is exactly what we had hoped would
happen. Skies started out partly cloudy,
but cleared as the sky became fully dark. We were able to
easily
handle the large crowd since we had lots of
telescopes setup around Owl Observatory. Thanks to
Bob Havira,
Jim Kurtz,
Tim Kurtz,
John Miller,
Kerry Robbert,
Mike Sinclair,
Don Stilwell,
Roger
Williams,
Dave Woolf,
and anyone
else I
missed for setting up their telescopes and sharing views of the heavens
above. It’s what we do best.
Jean and I have coordinated a
lot of Astronomy
Day
events and this one by far was the most challenging, but it was worth
it. The quality of our event far exceeded the
efforts of anything most museums and planetariums across the country
could put
together. I’m very happy with the
attendance (600+ in all) and how everything worked out. We
had visitors from all across lower
Michigan and northern Indiana. Again, I
can’t thank all our volunteers and sponsors
enough. On May
30th, I think we proved we’re
the best astronomical organization in Michigan.
