Reach for the Stars

Mojo and I attended the AANC - Astronomical Association of Northern California's annual conference "Reach for the Stars" at College of San Mateo yesterday. Mojo took pictures and I gave a Cassini Mission talk. http://aancstars2007.org/events.shtml Once it was dark, the CSM Observatory opened, after a great Planetarium show about Black Holes. All day long there was a planetarium show called The Sky at Night to whet the attendees appetites for what would be visible that night. Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, the moon, and several galaxies clusters and nebula were visible from the observatory through assorted telescopes owned by both the university and by attending amateur astronomers - dozens of telescopes in the afternoon and the evening. In the daytime there were some great talks - two on astrophotography, and the others on science, the hourly planetarium shows, family activities, a solar system walk, solar observing and telescope making demonstrations, and even a band called Dark Matter singing and playing! Everyone hung around for the raffle - lots of wonderful donated items - from telescopes to cameras to books to posters and more. Dr. Peter Jenniskens had the Aurigid Meteor Mission covered at the SETI table. Complete with meteorites, his flight suit, a Mission photo poster display, a flux measurement camera and meteor videotape running all afternoon - the same camera I used to record the meteors I saw and counted on the Aurigid and Perseid Mission flights last month. We arrived at about 10:00 a.m. and left about 11:00 p.m. - had a great time seeing all our Northern California astro pals! Lots of work to put these conferences on - College of San Mateo, the San Mateo County Astronomical Society, the AANC and KCSM's Jazz Under the Stars, dozens of volunteers and the vendors http://aancstars2007.org/vendors.shtml for a great day and night! Here are the pictures: http://photo.whiteoaks.com/2007-09-29-aanc/ There are several conferences like this here in southern California too! We'll try to tell you about them all. Let us know if you are interested. Last Night there was also the Starry Starry Nights Festival in Yucca Valley which we missed because we couldn't be in two places at the same time. Our next sidewalk astronomy nights are October 19 and 20, and we may do something for Halloween too! Jane -- Jane Houston Jones Senior Outreach Specialist, Cassini Program JPL - 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 230-205 Pasadena, CA 91109 818-393-6435 jane.h.jones(a)jpl.nasa.gov Cassini SOC http://soc.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm What's Up? http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/amateurastronomy/index.html