A Day at Yerkes Observatory: Mars and Astronomical Art

This Saturday March 16 I will be participating in both a teacher workshop and a public star party at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay WI. This will be my first time visiting Yerkes in a long time. Aside from my duties that day, I hope that I have sufficient time to explore and photograph this landmark observatory.

Packing for Mars Teacher Workshop

Packing for Mars

The theme for the teacher workshop I'm taking part in is "Packing for Mars" and uses as its focus the book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach (W. W. Norton & Company; 2010). If you are a teacher it is not too late to register. Registration includes CPDUs and lunch. A fee of $25 for the workshop will be collected on the day of the workshop.

The segment that I will be leading, What Would You Bring?, actually deals with planning a human mission to Mars. Identifying the resources a mission would need to bring along is a subset of the overall mission planning. Other aspects of mission planning include mission objectives, mission duration, infrastructure, and strategic and tactical implementation issues.

The planned agenda for the day is:

8:30am	Coffee and Registration
9:00am	Book Discussion: Packing for Mars
10:00am	What Would You Bring?
11:00am	Discussion with Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars
12:00pm	Lunch provided by Stars at Yerkes
1:00pm	Packing the Portable Life Support System (PLSS)
2:00pm	Building Project
4:15pm	Wrap up: final thoughts, additional resources, evaluations and CPDUs

To register, complete the Packing for Mars Teacher Workshop Registration Form.

Yerkes Observatory Public Star Party

In the evening there will be a public star party with, hopefully, clear skies. If you do not know what a star party is, it provides people with the opportunity to observe various astronomical wonders using a telescope. For more information, check out the Wikipedia entry for Star Party. As a part of the star party, I will be giving a highly condensed version of my presentation The Art of Astronomy which looks at the evolution of astronomical art over the years.

The star party begins at 7:00pm and ends at 9:00pm. My presentation is about 30 minutes long and will start at 7:15pm. If you plan on attending the Yerkes Observatory Public Star Party, there is a fee of $5 per person or $15 per family. To help the astronomers get an idea of how many people will be attending, please fill out the
Yerkes Observatory Public Star Party Registration Form.

Yerkes Observatory Information

Location: 373 West Geneva Street, Williams Bay WI 53191
Web Site: astro.uchicago.edu/yerkes
Location on Map: Google Maps

Ad Astra, Jim

| Return to the Blog Index | This entry was posted on Monday, March 11th, 2013 at 8:04 am and is filed under Algorithmic Art, Astronomy, Presentations.