A study on how to show stars at Vierves-sur-Viroin

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Oct 05

2010

by Raoul Lannoy

During the first week-end of october 2010, the frenchspeaking amateur astronomers federation organized a study about various ways to show stars for educational purposes.

It happened in a very beautiful  Walloon village, near the french border, at Vierves-sur Viroin.

We learned how to create, with paper, scissors and glue a planisphere, an animated zodiac (showing the difference between the astrological and the astronomical zodiacs).

We also leanrned how to build a star counter (we cut a 12 cm wide hole in a paper, attach a 26 cm long thread to it, put the other end in our mouth and close an eye: what we see through the hole is 1% of the entire sky. We count the stars we see through it and repeat this several times at different heights.

A game, outside is about recreating the Big Dipper 7 stars with threads running from an observer to a friend representing one of the stars. The length of the threads is relative to the stars distances from Earth. That way, we have an idea of the 3 dimensional Big Dipper (some stars are bending their knees, others are standing on seats, to represent the constellation.

Also, disks with or without (many) lines were representing stars' brightnesses and we tried to estimate their apparent and absolute magnitudes. 

It was a way, through various exercizes, kits and modules, to show where stars are, etc....It was very interesting !