McKenzie Lake Star Night - December 2017

Each month we host a free, kid friendly astronomy event at the McKenzie Lake Community Centre.  We have a short presentation on what is currently sitting above us in the sky followed by some time with the telescope.

We had a great evening!  More than twenty people came out to enjoy some time under the stars in Calgary's suburbs!  We learned many things together!  Many children came out and they were very smart!  Great questions!

We discussed constellations and went over a few that would be in the sky that evening.

Orion
Taurus
Gemini
Ursa Minor
Ursa Major

Orion was coming up over the homes in the East and we all had the opportunity to catch M42 - The Orion Nebula through the telescope.  As it got higher in the sky the contrast improved significantly.

Taurus was sitting a little higher than Orion and our first target for the night was M45 - The Pleiades Star Cluster.  It cut through the light pollution like a sword and made for a wonderful sight.  The binoculars were handed around to see the full expanse of the Pleiades with some people dropping down to the Hyades Star Cluster.

Gemini rose above the houses later in the evening.  I pointed out where the Geminids would radiate from and showed off one of my favourite open clusters -- M35.  M35 was barely visible through the binoculars indicating fairly bad light pollution.

The North Star was shining down on us from Ursa Minor.  Unfortunately, besides Kochab you couldn't really make out any other stars.

After everyone had a chance to see the Orion Nebula, the kids had a chance to make their own nebula.  All of them had their own unique beauty much like the ones in the sky. Some samples of these masterpieces are shown below.

Nebula Craft

After some hot chocolate we all sat back down and watched a quick video on one of 2017's greatest space stories: The Grand Finale of Cassini.  There were some great questions about the spacecraft!

How large was it?

An image of the construction is shown below.  It is about the size of a school bus!

Cassini Construction (Photo Credit: ESA)

How was it fueled?

It was fueled using a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.  A discussion on this would be outside the scope of this entry so a wikipedia link is provided below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

Next month we may talk about telescopes and binoculars and how they work and what to look for when deciding on purchasing.

Telescopes - What should I look for?
Binoculars - What should I look for?

If there are any topics you would like to see covered, or any objects in the sky you would like to see please leave a comment!  Hope to see you out in January!