{"id":114423,"date":"2018-04-04T12:48:44","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T16:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=114423"},"modified":"2018-05-02T10:07:42","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T14:07:42","slug":"bates-at-night-astronomy-night-extravaganza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/04\/04\/bates-at-night-astronomy-night-extravaganza\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates at Night: Astronomy Extravaganza"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the sun dipped behind the Chase Hall weather vanes Monday night, the young and the young-at-heart gathered outside Carnegie Science Hall for the Bates College Astronomy Extravaganza.<\/p>\n

Bright-eyed schoolchildren peered through telescopes towards the stars and listened to students in Assistant Professor of Physics Aleks Diamond-Stanick’s introductory astronomy course teach and demonstrate the wonders of the cosmos.<\/p>\n\t\n\t

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Clifford Odle, 8, of Lewiston, points to the title on a \"Life Cycle of a Star\" poster board, while Eliza Dunham '20, of New Haven, Conn., explains what a supernova is. <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Maeve O'Brien '21 of Essex, Conn., explains the life cycle of a star. <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Silhouetted in the Ladd Planetarium in Carnegie Science Hall, Aidan Temperino '21 of Plymouth, N.H., and Maggie Phelan '20 of Lewiston, Maine, talk about how the night sky changes with the seasons. <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Eliza Dunham '20, of New Haven, Conn., demonstrates what a Type 2 supernova is by popping a balloon filled with glitter. <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Yihao Yang '20 of Houston, center, along with Maya Burgos '19 of Lynn, Mass., right, and Viridiana Chavez '20 of Chicago, right, demonstrate the difference between a constellation and an asterism by using toothpicks and gummy bears to build their own constellations. <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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As part of the event, hosted in collaboration with the Harward Center for Community Partnerships,\u00a0Jamie Fagan ’20 of Wilton, Conn., and Daniel Murphy ’18 of Lexington, Mass., demonstrated air pressure and Newton’s laws using a stomp rocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot of time learning for ourselves, but now it\u2019s time for us to give back the knowledge we\u2019ve learned, and we\u2019re really happy and excited to do that,\u201d Fagan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more exciting than rocket launches for little kids, so just being able to just spread that excitement to them has been super awesome, we\u2019ve loved it,\u201d added Murphy.<\/p>\n

Maeve O’Brien \u201821 of Essex, Conn., along with group partners Eliza Dunham \u201820, of New Haven, Conn., and Jill Futter \u201821 of Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., demonstrated different types of supernovas by popping balloons.<\/p>\n

One balloon contained a ping pong ball \u2014 representing a Type 1 supernova, which results in a small white dwarf star. “Nothing really exciting,” Futter said.<\/p>\n

But the other balloon contained glitter, which burst out with the force of the pop. “When a Type 2 explodes, it’s very bright and kind of sparkly, which is a lot cooler, in my opinion,” Futter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope kids leave here with a little bit more knowledge about astronomy, and also that they gain an interest in science,\u201d O’Brien said. “I think astronomy is a different subject than what kids learn in school, and events like this can really spark an interest in a different field.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students “spread the excitement” to local schoolchildren at the annual Astronomy Extravaganza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1016,"featured_media":114599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[243,133,31,217,11012,11009],"tags":[96,11217,10765],"class_list":["post-114423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annual-events","category-creativity","category-lewiston-auburn","category-science-technology","category-student-life","category-the-college","tag-astronomy","tag-bates-at-night","tag-physics-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1016"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114423"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114605,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114423\/revisions\/114605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}