One astro faculty and a group of astro students (you'll see exactly which ones soon) took the department's Coronado solar telescope at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market. Along with the telescope, they also sported asunspotter, also to catch the Sun of course, just a little bit differently, in a clearly safe and simple way. The group also "cooked" edible comets (tasting suspiciously like ice cream), and showed how they can form their tails when the future eater pretends to be the Sun and blows a bit of "solar" wind on them.The kids enjoyed probing cratering on potential planets' surfaces with a variety of impactors (i.e., peebles). Imagine all these while we all talked a lot about astronomy:
The black holes were surely a hit, mainly because Nathan DiDomenico was there to answer the questions:
Kyle Eskridge mastered the Sun:
Jimmy Corcoran went extragalactic:
Anthony Saikin delighted audience with details about binary stars:
Emil Christensen illuminated on the history of astronomy, geo- vs helio-centric systems, telescopes, distances to stars, etc…
Anca Constantin featured the big bang and the history of the universe:
You can see here many more pictures with us and the curious people who surrounded us on that first day of October (also our 1st, and thus our debut with the "Astronomy at the Market" Show).
