Open House 2007 Activities

Children's activities

(In courtyard unless otherwise indicated)

• Starlab Planetarium (Floor 1, Building B):
  Learn about the constellations inside our portable planetarium.
  
• Rocket making (Behind Building C):
  Learn some physics by launching soda-bottle rockets as high as you can, using a bike pump.
• Mars Drop:
  Simulate a NASA spacecraft landing on Mars using a raw egg, some packaging and some ingenuity.
• Make a sundial:
  Tell the time with a cleverly folded sheet of paper.
• Make a constellation:
  Decorate a picture of one of your favorite constellations, then take it home and compare it with the real sky tonight.
• Solar system search:
  Learn about the size of the solar system, then use your knowledge to find the planets that are hidden around our courtyard.
• Face painting:
  Would you like a planet on your forehead, or a nebula on your nose?
• Ironwood Observatory:
  Test your knowledge of the skies in a game of AstroJeopardy.
• Bishop Museum:
  What do Mars, marshmallows and M&Ms have in common?

Family activities

Courtyard

• Scientific Instrument Shop:
  Tour the workshop were we build the cameras and spectrographs for Mauna Kea's telescopes.
• Sun and Venus Observing:
  Keep your fingers crossed for good weather in Manoa and bad weather on the Sun.
• Friends of the Institute for Astronomy:
  Support the IfA and receive an invitation to our hospitality room by joining the Friends.
  
• Hawaiian Astronomical Society:
  Meet the members of Oahu's thriving amateur astronomers' club.
  
• UH Bookstore:
  Want to learn more about what you saw today? Buy a book on astronomy here.
  
• UH Centennial Committee:
  Help celebrate the fact that UH is 100 years old this year.
• Astrobiology Display:
  Looking for clues to the origin of life draws together scientists from traditionally very different disciplines.
  
• The Cosmic Signpost:
  You name it, the Cosmic Signpost will point to it.
• T-shirt Sales:
  Buy a souvenir of your visit to the IfA Open House.
• Refreshments:
  Free ice water and cookies to keep up your strength.

Building B

• Adaptive Optics Laboratory (Floor 1):
  See how we use computer-controlled mirrors to remove the blurring of star images by Earth's atmosphere.
  

Building C

• Family Lectures (Floor 2, Auditorium and Room C-221):
  30 minute astronomy talks on everything over the Sun. See schedule.
• Astronomy School (Floor 2, Rooms C-227 - C-229):
  Use telescope simulation software to learn how professional astronomers take the temperature of a star, or measure the speed of a galaxy.
  
• Pan-STARRS Display (Floor 2 Lobby):
  Get an update on our "Killer Asteroid" telescope project with its gigantic digital cameras
• IRTF Laboratory tour (Floor 1 Lobby):
  Watch us operate a telescope hundreds of miles away; see what you look like though an infrared camera; watch what happens when things get VERY cold.
• Optics Demonstrations: (Floor 1, Lobby):
  How do we make light go where we want it to go?
• Spectroscopy Demonstration (Floor 2, Room C-216):
  How do we learn what the Universe is made of?
  

Library

• Family Telescope and Software Clinics:
  What to buy and how to use it
  
• Ask an Astronomer:
  We try to answer your simplest and your toughest questions
  
• Hawaii State Science Fair Projects:
  What Hawaii's youngest generation of astronomers is up to.