Oh my stars
When I saw the schedule of activities at Callaway Gardens, I quickly found one that could be awesome or a big problem. Monday night they had an “Oh, My Stars!” astronomy program scheduled at 9pm. I knew my girls would love this, especially Leah. Leah is so enamored with space that she’s having a space-themed birthday party when she turns 6. But, at the same time, I knew we wouldn’t be getting to bed until 11pm after a very busy day of camp. And there would be no sleeping in the next morning. Molly could probably handle this, but it would probably be too much for Leah.
So, I gave Leah a choice. I told her if she wanted to go, she’d have to take a nap after tennis. Despite this being a terrible thing to her, she agreed quickly and fell asleep quickly when the time came. So, that night most of the adults and all three of the little girls headed out to a field for some astronomical fun.
Callaway brought out folks from the Coca-Cola Space Science Center nearby to give a bit of a talk on astronomy, then guide us through the sky. They brought four big telescopes (10” reflector telescopes, if memory serves) that looked a lot like Molly’s telescope only bigger. They pointed these at various items, but most popular by far was Saturn (Leah’s favorite planet).
We spent most of the time just looking at the sky without telescopes. Like many people, where we live in Maryland is surrounded by light pollution. Pine Mountain, Georgia, however, has no such problems. This picture is just a small taste of what we could see in the sky.
We also saw lots of man-made satellites. Whenever someone saw one, they would shout out “Satellite” and one of the volunteers would point it out with a high-power green laser pointer.
In the end, we had a great time. The girls said it was definitely one of the highlights of the week.
