Friday, November 07, 2008

Successful Community Astronomy Night


So, I've been the planetarium director at our middle school for two years now, and we're finally getting things really going. It took awhile for me to become really comfortable with not only the equipment but also with my knowledge of the night sky. We've been doing shows for elementary groups, which has involved over a hundred hours of programming, and finally felt ready to do a community show. Our first Community Astronomy Night was last night, and I had been a little nervous about the turnout. I had images of only a dozen people showing up, in a planetarium that seats 60. Nowhere in my fears did I imagine what actually ended up happening-- over a hundred people showed up! It was pretty stressful; we ended up cramming in as many people as we could, but they just kept coming! We ended up having to do a second show, which made for a long but rewarding night.

We had hoped to go outside and do some observations, but the weather didn't exactly cooperate. We are looking forward to many more community nights, and next time we'll plan for two shows!

1 comment:

Jennie Durren said...

Wow, it's awesome that you're a planetarium director - I didn't know that. I had a whole big post typed up but the computer ate it. We should talk about that at Thanksgiving!