1st of September 2006

Outreach/Education Activities Summary

(June 2005 – August 2006)

compiled by Hiroko Shinnaga with editing and additions by RAChamberlin

 

Student/Teacher Mentoring:

-          David Jolly who came from New Zealand visited CSO to learn Submillimeter astronomy.  He joined CSO observation (SHARP) on the night of January 6th 2006.

 

-          CSO Staff member and electrical engineer, Riley Ceria is working with faculty and staff at the  Waiakea High School in Hilo to help them develop their robotics program.   This effort involves several hours per week of staff time.

 

-          Walter Steiger is available to mentor several high school science teachers he recently met the “Hands on Optics” workshop he attended.

 

 

Public talks:

-          Richard Chamberlin gave a public “Universe Tonight” talk at Visitor Information Station (VIS) on November 5th, 2005.  The abstract of the talk was published in the Hawaii Tribune Herald.

-          Astrovaganza was held for teachers who came from various places in the U.S. (from east coast to Hawaii) on June 27th, 2005. Hiroko gave a talk at a Subaru conference room.

-          Vernal Equinox Party at IfA UH was held for local astronomers, students, professors, and staffs who work for observatories at Mauna Kea and UH on 20 March 2006. Hiroko gave a short talk.

 

Demonstrations/outreach  projects developed:

-          Radio Interference Demonstration (radio wave) with a worksheet  (Brief report is on a web at

http://www.cso.caltech.edu/outreach/log/CSOoutreach.htm )

-          Parabolic Dish Demonstration (optics) (Brief report is available on a web at

http://www.cso.caltech.edu/outreach/kiosk/news2006/astroday2006/index.html  )

-          CSO Art Project (decoration project for any age. Brief report is on a web at

http://www.cso.caltech.edu/outreach/kiosk/news2006/astroday2006/index.html  )

-          CSO logo products including T-shirts, mug cups, and magnets are available to the public at the Visitor Information Station (VIS) at Mauna Kea.  The designs were developed by a staff at the VIS, the provider company,  Walter Steiger, and Hiroko.

 

 

 

Outreach related public/special events:

-          St Joseph Country Fair was held on October 8th, 2005.  CSO presented a big poster, radio interference demonstration,  CSO staff members (Pat, Hiro, Melanie, Ed, Steve, and Hiroko) attended the event.

-          CSO contributed some gifts (CSO T shirts, CSO postcard, and CSO brochure) to Make-A-Wish Foundation child Christopher Bolen, a 16 year-old Claremore, Oklahoma, boy with interests in astronomy and photography.  A special tour to Mauna Kea (visiting observatories, dinner at HP, stargazing, astro-imaging) was arranged on October 28th, 2005.

-          CSO contributed some funding through the MKOOC for the “Heart Walk” event held in the end of January 2006.

-          Onizuka Science Day was held on January 26th, 2006.  CSO presented a big poster, radio interference demonstration, vacuum system demonstration.  CSO staff and one volunteer (Diana, Walter, Riley, Melanie, Ed, Steve, Hiroko) attended the event. A brief report is available on the web at

http://www.cso.caltech.edu/outreach/log/CSOoutreach.htm  )

-          Astroday was held at the Prince Kuhio Plaza on May 6th, 2006. A brief report is available on the web at

http://www.cso.caltech.edu/outreach/kiosk/news2006/astroday2006/index.html

CSO staff and two volunteers (Diana, Ruisheng, Ed, Steve, Riley, Walter, Ray S Furuya and Hiroko) participated in the event.  We had the CSO art project and parabolic dish demonstration at our booth, together with our big CSO poster. 

-          CSO contributed some funding through the MKOOC for the “Relay for Life” event held on 15-16th of July 2006.

-          On the night of Deep Impact (July 3rd, 2005 (HST)), CSO made spectroscopic observations towards the comet Tempel 1, led by Darek Lis.  Special outreach events were held on the Big Island, Maui, and Oahu. See  http://www.astroday.net/DeepImpactHawaii.html.  CSO observers talked to the people who joined the event through a videoconference system (over 1000 people) to report the observation from Mauna Kea. (Darek Lis, Chip Sumner, and Sarah Landstreet (summer student from Canada) and Hiroko joined the event from the CSO control room at the summit. ) Brief report can be found on a web at http://www.cso.caltech.edu/DI_CSO.html .

 

CSO Tours:

-          A tour was arranged for two professors at University of Colorado (Sandra and Carol) who were visiting for the workshop “Science Inquiry Workshop” on April 7th 2006.

-          A tour was arranged for 13 people from Japan (3 professors and 10 undergraduate/graduate students at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology) as well as two Subaru telescope staff members, on July 6th 2006. 

 

Web pages:

-          “CSO Education, Outreach, and Public Service” compiles major outreach activities at the CSO.

-          “A Digest of Recent News and Scientific Results” (a new web site) provides a summary of recent scientific and outreach activities, live images of the observatory, list of academic papers and technical memoranda,  FAQs, public presentation file of talks CSO staffs gave in public events. This new web page was opened to the public on June 1st 2006. 

 

 

Museum/Visitor Information Station Displays:

-          Poster presentation at the Visitor Information Station (VIS).

-          Poster presentation at the Lyman Museum, Hilo. 

-          “What do astronomers do” panel at ‘Imiloa (D. Lis provided some materials at the CSO.)

-          About ten images taken at the CSO telescope (including the Antennae SHARCII image, Helix Nebula CO image, W43 SHARCII image, epsilon Elidani SHARCII image, Barnard 1 SHARCII image, distant galaxy cluster in Lockmanhole Bolocam image, HERTZ/SHARCII OMC-1 image, SgrA* flare SHARCII image, Fomalhaut SHARCII image, M51 SHARCII image) are presented at the image gallery display at ‘Imiloa.

-          Interactive presentation at the Visitor Information Station (VIS) was set up on July 7th, 2006, Windows box (Dell) was purchased for the presentation.  A customized Mozilla browser for kiosk-mode, developed by the Brooklyn Museum (New York City), was installed for the demonstration.

 

Media coverage (local):

-          Stars over Mauna Kea II (Hawaii Tribune Herald, printed in January 2006)

-          PBS documentary video “First Light” published in 2006.  

  -       Mauna Kea: A Guide to Hawaii’s Sacred Mountain was published in 2005. The CSO contribution           was by Walter Steiger, who also wrote the Foreword

 

Tours/workshops/exhibits attended by CSO staff:

-          Natural History Tour of Mauna Kea was organized by IfA UH on November 22nd 2005. The tour was given by Bill Stormont (the office director of Mauna Kea management). Hiroko attended the tour.

-          ‘Imiloa opening exhibits (8th) and ceremony (20th) in February 2006 (Hiroko attended as a representative at CSO.)

-          Workshop for Scientists on Scientific Inquiry (part of the ReSciPE Project), hosted by MKOOC, was held on April 8th, 2006.  (Riley, Ruisheng, Hiro, Richard, and Hiroko attended. ) Detail information of the program can be found on a web at http://cires.colorado.edu/education/k12/rescipe/

-          Hands-on-Optics (HOO) was held for local teachers on August 18-19th, 2006 at ‘Imiloa.  Walter participated in the workshop as a volunteer mentor. 

 

CSO EPO meeting attendence:

-          Mauna Kea Observatories Outreach Committee (monthly).  Hiroko attends the meeting most of the time.

 

Donation received:

-          We received a donation of a parabolic dish from the Time Warner Cable on April 14th 2006.   We use the dish for one of our demonstration (see the “Demonstrations/Outreach Related Projects developed” section above.)  The antenna was used for microwave communications.

 

 

 

Conference Sponsorshop

 

-Dontated $2,000 to help sponsor Bo Reipurth’sProtostars and Planets V”, conference held in Waikola Village, Oct 2005.  805 participants from 30 countries.

 

-Donated $4,000 to help sponsor the IFA’s  IAU conference “Planetary Nebulae in Our Galaxy and

Beyond IAU Symposium No. 234 (?)”.

 

 

 

Community Relations:

 

We make annual donations to the Hawaii Fire Fighters Association youth athletics program, and to the

Aha Puana Leo Hawaiian language program.

 



Note that St Joseph is a private school (from elementary to high school) and this event is for their fund raising.