We have been requested to support a STEM event at Northridge Elementary on Thursday, Jan 25th, 5:30-7:00pm. Setup can start as early as 4:30pm.
I will be out of state, so I need someone to ramrod this event and be the club POC with the STEM teacher. Please let me know if you can do this and I’ll give you her contact info.
The main event will be indoors, but sunset is at 5:54pm that evening, so we can have a dual venue; a table with static displays and material about astronomy (especially the upcoming eclipse) indoors, and a few telescopes set up out doors. We might be able to get a bit of solar viewing in before sunset.
They’re expecting around 200-250 people, for the event.
Enter at the Front door on the west side. South end of the parking lot.
Please post on here if you can support the club at this event. Please come even if you can’t, or don’t want to, bring any equipment! We always need folks there just to talk to people who come by our table or scopes. If you are bringing equpment, please post what you will be bringing. Even if cloudy, we can set up static displays inside.
Northridge Elementary School
8501 NW 82nd St
Oklahoma City, OK 73132
Jim Day has generously volunteered to be the club POC for this event. Please post here and contact him to coordinate your participation.
We need at least 3-4 club members with scopes for a static display indoors, as well as possible viewing outdoors in the parking lot. Please bring any material you may have on the Total Solar Eclipse, such as the Safe Viewing PDF I posted on Discord. If you have any solar viewing glasses that the club has gotten for give away, please bring those. Hopefully we’ll be getting more free glasses from AAS soon.
Come even if you don’t bring equipment, please! We always need members just to be at the table to talk to families coming by interested in astronomy! This is a big event and we get lots of publicity with young families!
I will be monitoring this thread as the week progresses. It is my hope that two or three club members will volunteer to help with this event. As of this morning the forecast is for cloudy skies, but we can still set up in the gymnasium, hand out some useful information and talk to the parents and kids. We want to make this a great event, so if YOU can make it out, and have information about astronomy, and why STEM education is important to our hobby, please sign up… and come talk to the kids. Last time we did this event a few of us met at a near by S&B Burger joint for “Happy Hour” appetizers prior to going to the school… that is again an option if anyone else is interested. Thanks!
I’m thinking about coming out after work not sure I could make it for dinner before maybe after. There will be a Full Moon to look at if it’s clear enough. I have a lot of hand out stuff from the NSN. I talked to Gerald the other day and he said he might come out with some binoculars.
We had Jim, Gerald and myself. I’m not sure how many we had I’m thinking about 100. We gave away information about the upcoming eclipse, some solar glasses, magazines, some NASA pictures with information about the objects and some 2024 Night Sky Almanac’s. We displayed a ZWO Seestar S50, AstroScan telescope and Binoculars on a stick.
Thank you for this summary and for sharing the couple of photos. I appreciate it. The table setup looks very good. And thank you to the three of you for representing the club.
