Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

What an 8 days.  It began and ended with Friday Night Lives in Traverse City.  We had reasonable weather for both.  Some clouds to contend with.  The sun was cooperating with sunspots both evenings.  The setup for the Friday night Live events runs from 5 to 5:30 p.m, with the actual event running to 9 p.m.  We always hang around later, moving the scopes to parking spaces.

On the 23rd we were there until after 11 p.m. with the gibbous moon rising above the buildings.   On the 30th we had no moon and the sky hazed out, so we weren’t there as long, but we did get a lot of traffic from Traverse City Film Festival, with the State Theater a couple of doors down the street.  Our troupe of Richard Kuschell, Gary Carlisle, Ron and Jan Uthe plus yours truly were  there with telescopes, GTAS brochures and observatory schedules.

On the 29th we went to St. Francis High School for a morning with the Munson Day Camp kids.  Richard Kuschell, Gary and Eileen Carlisle, Ron Uthe plus yours truly showed the kids sunspots with three of our telescopes.  The Carlisles put up their display of astronomical photographs, while I gave the kids a tour of the solar system.

We then had the kids experiment with moon balls to demonstrate the moon’s phases.  I had a ball that was scaled as the earth to the moon balls and had the kids put their moon balls on the floor, guessing how far from the earth the moon is.  We got the usual number of  short guesses, but in young man placed his moon ball at the proper distance.

The finale was cooking up a comet.  Here’s a video of how it’s done. We had the kids help each of us.  Gary made the best comet.  The rest of us hada bunch of cometlets.

We took Gary’s comet as an example and made another for Friday Night Live the next night.