Kleb Woods Astronomy Night – The Wonders of Light!
Last Saturday marked the fourth and final Kleb Woods Astronomy Night of 2024. Typically, we host a presentation and star party at this wonderfully dark location, but with cloudy weather that day, we quickly created an indoor activity—and it was a great success!
The first part of the evening was a presentation on “The Wonders of Light.” How can you split white light into a rainbow? Why do hummingbirds see more colors than humans—and many more than dogs? Why can’t we see the light from a TV remote, but a camera can? Why does a neon light show only a few colors of the rainbow? What is the color of the Milky Way and its nebulae? How can we display colors humans cannot see (Hubble palette)? And what happens when you make rainbows from stars?
The second part of the evening featured the Space Object Analyzer game! Each participant received an envelope with pieces of a spectrum puzzle we had prepared, a glue stick, a white paperboard, and, of course, a laboratory report template. Their mission? To piece together the spectrum of a space object and analyze its characteristics. Does it have more reds than greens or blues? Does it have dips or peaks?
They then brought their spectrum to the “Laboratory,” where they compared the continuum and dips/peaks with the wavelengths of Hydrogen, Helium, Titanium Oxide, and Methane. This allowed them to “discover” the star and learn what was happening with it. Was it an old star or a young star? Was it surrounded by a cloud of hydrogen gas? Was the hydrogen gas emitting light (Be star) or absorbing it (A, B star)? One star had exploded, emitting helium (WR 7). Another was a planet, and as sunlight reflected off it, they could see the methane light absorbed by its atmosphere (Uranus). The final station was the indoor observatory, where participants located their discovery in the winter night sky constellations.
The kids and adults were thrilled with their discoveries! The game made a complicated astronomy topic much easier to understand—and a lot of fun. What started as a cloudy night turned into an astronomical close to 2024. We’re looking forward to the next outreach events at Kleb Woods Nature Preserve in 2025!