This should have been a big success...

Jr. scientist E is obsessed with the moon. Every time my computer is out she asks to look at the pictures of the moon in our telescope gallery and she loves looking at the moon whenever it's out. So I've been excitedly waiting for the moon to be visible at a time when she'd be awake so we could look at it through the telescope. Tonight was finally the night. I set up the telescope, attached the camera so she could look at the camera screen instead of the much-more-difficult eye lens, and waited for the excitement. She was completely uninterested. I guess for a two-year-old the concept of looking down at a screen to see something up in the sky didn't make sense.

First planet sighting

We caught our first look at a planet through our telescope tonight. We were able to see Jupiter, along with it's moons (the picture doesn't do it justice). We weren't even sure it was a planet at first (and we didn't know which planet until we got home and looked it up - yes, we're very amateur astronomers). We noticed a big bright thing in a part of the sky where there should have been nothing bright, according to our star wheel. At first we thought it was an airplane, like all those bright "stars" we see that flash red and blue, but through the telescope it was clearly a beautifully round planet, surrounded by a diagonal line of moons (o.k., we didn't figure out that those were moons until we looked up pictures of Jupiter). It was a very exciting night.

Stargazing

Since about the only thing in the sky that I can name is the moon, I decided to try to learn how to identify the various celestial objects. I found a great site for a print-at-home star wheel that shows the positions of the stars at different months and times of night and went out for a stargazing walk with Jr. Scientist A. After explaining to him what the star wheel did, he started pointing to every star he saw asking me what it was called. He's always been interested in outer space, but this was a level of enthusiasm that I rarely see. Although I'm sure my star and constellation naming was less than completely accurate (I'm pretty sure I labeled a few airplanes as stars), both Jr. Scientist A and I had a great time.

New telescope toys

We got some new equipment for the lab telescope - a moon filter to increase clarity and a camera mount to help us take pictures. We're still learning to use the camera mount, but jr. scientist A is having fun taking pictures and movies of the moon.

Expectations

Although we've had our fair share of "dud" experiments, some experiments, albeit technically successful, don't land with the jr. scientists. It seems that there is what I can only refer to as an expectation gap. The experiments that have the biggest wow factor tend to be those that defy expectations. I suspect this is why bubbles are so fascinating to young children, and for adults it takes the bubble-suspended-in-space experiment to make bubbles cool. Likewise, the realm of possible is considerably smaller for adults, and some things that are expectation-defying for adults are just normal occurrences for kids. The other night Jr. Scientist A, myself, friend-of-the-lab David, and visiting Jr. Scientist S went to a mars rover landing party. As the rover landed on mars and sent back the first photos, the adults made a valiant effort to convince the kids that this was a big deal and really cool. The excitement of the moment was somewhat lost on the jr. scientists, and I suspect that the muted reaction was related to Jr. Scientist A's question to me earlier that day asking if we could go to mars the next day. I guess when making a day trip to mars is part of your normal expectations, seeing a grainy snapshot from the red planet just isn't that exciting.

Exploring the lunar surface

Since jr scientist A has quite an interest in outer space, we decided to investigate why the moon looks like it does. I ran across this experiment in Pop Bottle Science (yes, I know, this has nothing to do with pop bottles). We looked at some pictures of the moon with all its craters and I asked jr. scientist A where he thought all those bumps came from. He didn't have any idea so we got out a container and some flour and made a mock lunar surface. Then I rolled a piece of play-dough into a little ball and threw it into the flour resulting in a mock crater in our mock lunar surface. Jr. scientist A had lots of fun making craters and it seemed to really make sense to him. It was a great way to explain an otherwise difficult to conceptualize idea (I wish I could take credit for coming up with the experiment!)

More moon-gazing

We've been spending more time looking through the telescope. Jr. scientist A noticed that around bedtime, the moon is in different spots in the sky on different days. Now that we're looking at a smiley-face crescent moon (I'm sure that's the technical term for that moon phase), he's noticed that the image we see through the lens is flipped compared to what he sees without the telescope. Still having lots of fun. Jr. scientist A likes changing back and forth between our two lenses to see the "close up moon" and the "far away moon."

Moon-gazing

Jr. scientist A is really into outer space right now, and he got a telescope for the holidays. We weren't quite sure if he'd be able to look through the lens or understand what he was looking at. After a few times of me setting up the telescope and having him look at the moon, he decided he wanted to see some more earth-bound objects through the telescope. We started playing a game. I would aim at something familiar from across the apartment complex (like a decoration in his bedroom window) and ask him to tell me what he saw. He was generally able to identify what I pointed the telescope at - guess he was able to see through the telescope.

Going out to look at the moon (and some local objects) through the telescope has since become a nightly ritual. The only problem is that when there are a number of adults around, it's hard for Jr. scientist A to get a turn!