107 of my students (about half) showed up to the star party. I guess sweetening the extra credit deal helped draw more, plus the weather cooperated. I was able to see the comet very easily through the telescope, though not nearly so easily with the naked eye. It is a lot bigger and more diffuse now, just looks like a weird glow next to Mirphak (brightest star in Perseus).
Sadly, when I gave the big sky tour to the students, I forgot about half or more of all the neat trivia I know about the various constellations that are up right now. I should've gone more slowly and used my IPod notes, but out there, I realized the backlit screen is actually too bright and ruins my night vision, so I didn't want to keep going back to it to find new stuff to talk about.
With practice, I will definitely have quite an arsenal of cool stuff to talk about while roaming the sky with the laser pointer. My goal by next year is to give about a good long show if the weather is good and to remember at least 4-5 neat things or objects in every constellation. My sky tour was popular anyway, even incomplete and only about 20 mins long. Not only were my students gathered around, but probably at least another 100 people watching and listening. The bright laser point I had was very useful, and the Leonids cooperated by sending a couple of meteors past while we were all looking up.
I'm definitely inspired to keep plugging through all the constellations. It makes for a really cool narrative. I also found out who Astroprof is. Out of two possible people who I thought it might be, I had picked wrong. It was good to find out, and I gave the author his very well deserved high praise. Over these past two months, I've come to appreciate how tough it is to do a competent job at a science blog written for the general masses as opposed to just scatter-shooting whatever the hell you feel like writing about, and who cares who reads it or what they think.
Posted by Observer at November 17, 2007 10:18 PMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
Sounds like the star party went well! You'll find that those laser pointers may sometimes gain more interest from passers-by than the stars themselves! Still, it's a good way to lure folks over and - maybe - get them interested.
On the iPod thing, consider placing/taping some red cellophane over the screen. Folks I observe with do that with theirs.
Cheers,
Phil