The Olympic Natural Resources Center invites you to an interactive, engaging program on astronomy on Saturday, Sept. 26. University of Washington graduate students from the Department of Astronomy will lead science-based activities to discover more about the skies above.
To lend a hand, they’re bringing their mobile planetarium to Forks to provide a close-up view of the night sky. Two programs will be held on Saturday: a family focused program will be from 1-3 p.m., with a later program for adults from 7-9 p.m.
The planetarium shows are about 20 minutes long so groups of people can cycle through the performances or come back in for a repeat viewing. In addition to the planetarium show there will be other activities, two PowerPoint presentations and a star-gazing session. The afternoon session will include youth-focused presentations and activities, while the evening session will include more in-depth presentations.
The presenters are Rodrigo Luger, Neil Byler, Spencer Wallace and Grace Telford. All students volunteer their time to do these programs. The planetarium’s dome, created by the company Go-Dome, is an inflatable room resembling an igloo. At approximately 10 feet high and 20 feet across, the dome can fit about two dozen viewers. It is a fully functional planetarium that offers many of the same images as the high-tech planetarium located on the university campus. The planetarium runs Microsoft Research’s World Wide Telescope software on a laptop computer. A large hemispherical mirror projects the high density image from the back of the dome across three-quarters of its interior.
The planetarium brings modern astronomy down from space and into the schools and community, providing viewers an immersive experience of the universe.
About the presenters
Telford is a third-year graduate student in astronomy and data science. She is interested in using observations of large samples of galaxies to study the history of their formation and evolution. Her talk will cover the history of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the variety of astronomy research that it has enabled.
Byler is a fifth-year graduate student in astronomy. She studies nearby galaxies, using the individual start within a galaxy to understand its evolution as a whole. Byler will give a talk on the Andromeda Galaxy titled, “Rings in a Tree Stump: What Stars Can Tell Us About the Life of a Galaxy.”
Wallace is a first-year graduate student in astronomy. His interests include using computer simulations to study the formation of starts and galaxies in the early universe.
Luger is a fourth-year graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington. He is interested in the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets and the search for life beyond Earth.
For more information, contact F. Hanson at 374-4556 or fsh2@uw.edu
