St. B’s First Astronomy Day
With National Astronomy Day just around the corner, St. Bernard’s is pleased to announce its first Astronomy Day, which will be celebrated at school next Tuesday, October 11. St. B’s science teacher, Mr. Parsons, and the Astronomy Club led the way in organizing this event. Their passion for the night sky inspired a full day of programming at St. B’s.
James D. is the acting president of St. B’s Astronomy Club, which was founded last year. James has always loved science and has attended after-school science classes at the American Museum of Natural History for eleven years, studying astrophysics, biodiversity, and anthropology. He especially loves astronomy. He finds it incredible that everything that exists now was created in a millisecond. He thoroughly enjoyed studying the sky from St. B’s roof last year. It felt great to apply what he had learned to find the moon, stars, and sun through the school’s six-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
James is extremely excited about the inflatable astrodome that will be installed in the gym next Tuesday for St. B’s Astronomy Day. There will be multi-media shows on view inside the astrodome throughout the day along with other astronomy-related film screenings outside of the dome. There will also be a guest lecturer, Irene Pease, who is an astrophysics educator at American Museum of Natural History. She also serves on the board of the Amateur Astronomy Association of New York and is known around town as “Brooklyn’s Friendly Neighborhood Astronomer.”
In addition to the lectures and screenings next Tuesday, everyone at St. B’s will have the chance to walk the universe thanks to Ms. Oshins and students from Mr. Brady’s class. They have been creating an interactive installation of our universe in the main stairwell. The distances between the planets have been scaled down to St. B’s stair sizes, so boys will be able to gain a physical understanding of the relative distances between the sun and planets in our solar system.
If you would like to take advantage of some of the astronomy-related activities throughout the city this weekend, please refer to the letter from Mr. Parsons that was included in the PA Announcement that was sent out on October 4. Please check back again next week to see photos from St. B’s Astronomy Day.
Special thanks to Mr. Parsons, St. B’s Science Department, St. B’s Astronomy Club, Ms. Oshins, and fifth graders in Mr. Brady’s class. We look forward to celebrating astronomy next week!
