Mission Reclaimed Outreach

By Warren Bracewell

I made it to the Mission Reclaimed outreach today at 10 A.M. and met with Rachel Jones. She thanked me for coming out and showed me where to set up to teach the kids about telescopes and astronomy. Their ages ranged from about 4 to 12, so I had to keep it simple.

My thanks to Tom Campbell for the story board and the solar system model. The model was a big hit with lots of discussion about planet sizes and distance. I was pretty amazed at what some of the kids knew about the planets.

I showed them my scope and explained how it worked. I showed the spotter scope and told them that it was a small telescope to help you find objects for the big scope. We talked about other types of scopes and I showed them my binoculars and explained that they were mini telescopes.

We tried looking at the sun after some safety instructions, but it was pretty boring with no sunspots. I then put the scope on a license plate about a block away and had everybody look at it and discuss what we saw.

I told them they should go out at night with their parents and look at the moon with binoculars if they had some. We pretty much ran out of time by then, so I told them thank you for having me and the kids went on to the next activity.