Presentation on Moon resortWhat is the current estimate of the number of moons in the Solar System? What are the hottest and coldest moons? These were some of the topics covered by Dr. Paul Guttman in this week's session entitled "Mysterious Moons of the Solar System" - part of a series for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. The answers, by the way, are 170 as of March 2009 according to The Planetary Society's web site; Jupiter's Io; and Pluto's Charon.

Article that appeared in the Tahoe Bonanza on 2/20/09

Those of us dedicated to a sustainable economic and ecological future for our precious Lake Tahoe Basin have long considered that in addition to declining lake clarity, artificial night lighting pollution has seriously degraded our fragile environment. While many communities around our country have successfully adopted sky-friendly night lighting ordinances, we have yet to act upon this easiest to remedy environmental blight.

Nathan with his finished RoverOn Monday, February 16th, Dr. Paul Guttman held a fun-filled session on space probes to our solar system at Sierra Nevada College. To an audience of 20 eager participants, Paul set the stage with a short Nova video on the making of the Mars Rover. It was quite impressive the number of people and companies involved and how every piece was hand made and designed to handle extreme conditions. Because it takes 10 minutes for a signal to reach Mars from Earth, the Rover had to be programmed to handle most tasks such as navigation completely on it own - an impressive feat.

deep in thought - photo by Jen SchmidtStory published in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza, 2/6/09

After finishing her own “pocket solar system,” a long piece of paper showing, to scale, the relative distances between planets, 5-year-old Kenna Bacon listens to Paul Guttman’s recap of the system Monday night at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Science. Monday’s pro­gram, entitled “The Life Story of Our Solar System,” is part of Space Science for Schools’ free biweekly interactive science learning events in celebration of “2009, The International Year of Astronomy.” For information, visit ss4s.org or call (775) 720-6999.

Frank reviewing an attendee's telescopeOn Saturday, January 17th, Frank Dibbell of the Cameron Park Rotary Club Community Observatory presented a wonderfully informative clinic on how telescopes work at the Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada. Using a beta version of a demonstration kit, Frank took several groups of enthusiastic kids through a step-by-step introduction to both the workings of a refractive and reflective telescopes. First, Frank demonstrated how a convex lens is able to bring a lighted image (in this case, a moon shape) to a focus point just light a refracting telescope. Second, using a pair of mirrors, he showed how a reflecting telescope such as a Newtonian telescope works.

"Space Science For Schools In The News"

Five organizations were named winners for Night Sky Network and SS4S made it again!
Astronomical Society of Northern New England
Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh
San Antonio Astronomical Association
Space Science for Schools
Stonebelt Stargazers