Anyone got experience stargazing with kids?

[Osirisra (Ken)]

Great tips, I like to make sure I have my ipad with skysafari handy to so as to be able to show a picture of some of the objects and have that all important 'how far is away is it' info.

[alistairsam]

Bo, Let me know if you need a hand and a scope, I have an 8" on a dob mount as well as a 10" on an eq mount which will help track the object if it doesn't end up in an unusual position. Happy to bring one or both and give a hand.
Cheers

[Regulus (Trevor)]

Bo.
First don't be anxious, they'll love it and you will have a very enjoyable evening.

We, me and David - Omegacrux, took his 8" Dob to a nearby rural primary school for an astronomy night and it was wonderful. Cold, crisp and fun.
Martin George from the Hobart observatory gave talks inside and about 10 amateur astronomers turned up with their scopes. However, the Dob we took turned out to be most popular and I can only think because it looked impressive to young eyes against 100 refractors and 8"-12" Meades on impressive tripod mounts for some reason. All I know is for 1 1/2 hours I seemed to have at least 10-15 people lined up to look at Saturn.
Also a surprise (but not in hindsight) was that the kids were quicker to grasp the essentials of looking through the eye piece than adults.
They liked it when I focused their attention on one thing at a time ie the planet / the rings / the moons so they could understand what they were seeing. They weren't impressed by adult stuff like distance and size.
It was also interesting to direct there attention to the Orion Neb and get there opinions about what colour it was.
Advice take a deep breath. Slow yourself down and keep it simple. They'll love it.
A chair for them to stand on and get them to hold the Dobs tensioning handle to steady themselves and it will be a lot of fun.
Eta Carina Neb, Omega Centauri and any large planets should work fine, as would the moon.
Trevor

[traveller (Bo)]

Thanks Trevor and everyone for your kind words of encouragement. Alistair, I will keep you in the loop, we talked about this at school council meeting tonight and we may have to do it early next year instead.
Cheers, Bo

[astronut (John)]

Don't forget a crescent Moon.

[astro_nutt]

Hi Bo,
I've done a few public viewing sessions.
Check to see if a "Working with children" I.D. card is required.
Have the children wipe thier eyelids with a tissue while waiting to have a peek.
Have some "Junior Astronomer" certificates printed up.
If possible, have some pictures of the objects you are going to view. The children can then relate to the object they see in the eyepiece.
Have fun!

[traveller (Bo)]

Originally Posted by astro_nutt

Hi Bo,
I've done a few public viewing sessions.
Check to see if a "Working with children" I.D. card is required.
Have the children wipe thier eyelids with a tissue while waiting to have a peek.
Have some "Junior Astronomer" certificates printed up.
If possible, have some pictures of the objects you are going to view. The children can then relate to the object they see in the eyepiece.
Have fun!

Thanks, great idea re the certificates.
There is no need for blue cards as it is not a school activity, we just happen to use school oval (and gym for toilet and power). The school principal is very supportive, her main concern was public liability insurance, but we have since clarified that with the Education Dept.
Cheers,
Bo

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

A good idea to help make the viewing area and surrounds safe from them triping at night is to have some red garden lights near by, just get the cheap $2 solar garden lights from bunnings and place a red pen lid over the LED mount. Works great when fully charged for about 4 to 5 hours of viewing time and some kids say it looks like a spaceship landing and take off pad.

[andyc (Andy)]

One quick tip, mentioned above, is to watch your language when trying to describe things (not the swearing!). Something I've noticed at a number of astronomy-related outreach events is the over-use of some exceedingly obscure terms, things that few of the public will know, and that will make their eyes glaze over double-quick. Stuff used by astronomers all the time: arc seconds, parsecs, astronomical units and more. A quote I heard at a Transit event: "Venus subtends a minute of arc" is an example - it's right out of the textbook, but it's dry, dusty, obscure, and who of the public is going to be anything other than turned right off by that sentence? The person who was being spoken to just looked utterly blank at this.

Do your best to use units, descriptions and analogies that ordinary people can relate to, even if the numbers are big, like distances in kilometres (or 'so many times as far away as the Moon/Sun/whatever'). Simpler analogies are better even if they end up not being absolutely technically correct - pedantry can also turn people off. A big challenge with astronomy communication is not to lose your audience in jargon, as there's so much of it about!

[pmrid (Peter)]

I thought I might add a link to this site if you haven't already held your observing night for kids- it's a northern hemisphere site but it does deal with southern views so all you need do is reverse the seasons they list and you'll fnd really useful information for assisted observation by a group.

Try it:
http://www.rocketmime.com/astronomy/index.html

Peter

[niko]

maybe someone can also comment on the usefulness of this?

http://www.oneminuteastronomer.com/southern-sky/