HIS Kids Christian students take a look at the stars on Astronomy Night
CLAY TWP — Waiting for the sky to darken, amateur astronomer Jody Farr adjusted his Celestron telescope as children and families from HIS Kids Christian School drove into the Sylvania Conservation Area to watch star clusters, planets and galaxies on the night before Saturday’s solar eclipse.
Astronomy Night, in collaboration with the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh, has brought students, families and staff of the school together for several years now, principal Carol Movey said before the event on Friday, Oct. 13.
During the event, several members of the association, including Farr, directed children to telescopes as they leaned their heads to the eyepiece, trying to find Saturn.
Against the darkness reflected in the eyepiece, the orange planet — hundreds of millions of miles away — looked perfectly defined and still, as if it were a photograph.
“It just makes you feel really small, right?” Farr said.
He said one of the most rewarding parts of presenting what he knows about stars and space is sharing that knowledge with children.
“Last time I was here, I did a little talk about how the speed of light is really fast, but the universe is so big that things take years, light takes years to get to places,” Farr said. “It was just fun watching the kids’ heads kind of explode.”
Farr’s interest in astronomy began in childhood, he said. Halley’s comet passed across the sky in 1986, when he was 15. He and his father “got into it pretty big,” he said.
Farr said he hopes the children he spoke to might be inspired to take what they’ve learned further.
“We’re always gonna need new scientists, right?” he said.
As he readjusted the telescope, he and other amateur astronomers pointed to the sky. There was Arcturus, they said, the fourth brightest star.
With some telescopes, you can even see the different colors of the stars, they said.
“I think you naturally have a desire to know the unknown. What’s out there?” said amateur astronomer and Seneca Valley biology teacher Tom Lavelle. “Through a telescope, it’s a whole different world. When you look through your lens, you can see dying stars and you can see, you know, 200,000 stars roped in by their gravitational pull.”
After stepping away from the telescope, first-grader Zachary, who had seen Saturn before, said his favorite planet to watch out for was Jupiter, because of its big red spot.
“I love Earth, because we’re all on it,” Ivy, a preschool student, said.
