Posts Tagged ‘Little Thompson Observatory’
Star Night: November 2019
Members of the Lakota tribe observed the stars while remaining in one geographical area over a period of thousands of years. In the "Winter Circle" they saw a representation of their seasonal migration through the Black Hills in Western South Dakota. The stars also represented the spiritual life of the people. The shape of the earth was thought to resemble the constellations above. Much of this mirroring takes place inside the red clay valley which encircles the Black Hills of South ... Full Story
Star Night, April 2019
The speaker for this evening will be Dr. John Spencer from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder and the title of his talk will be “The Furthest Flyby: New Horizons Visits Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69”. On January 1, 2019, deep in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past the small object 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, making MU69 the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. New Horizons revealed MU69 to be a ... Full Story
Star Night: January 2019
The Speaker this month is Tim Gasparrini. Mr. Gasparrini is the GOES-R program manager and vice president at Lockheed Martin Aerospace who is the builder of the GOES spacecraft. Tim will tell us about the GOES program, its mission and history and the new GOES-17 spacecraft which was just launched in March of this year. GOES-17 (formerly GOES-S) is the second of the current generation of weather satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). ... Full Story
Star Night December 2018
The speaker for this evening is The LTO Board Member and Science and Astronomy Teacher at Berthoud High School Scott Kindt. The title of his talk will be “The Science behind our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”. Is intelligent alien life widespread throughout the cosmos or are we alone? This question has been debated for centuries. With the discovery and application of radio telescopes, astronomers have found a tool that can be used to look for other intelligent ... Full Story
Star Night October 2018
Since Galileo invented the telescope over 400 years ago, people have built ever larger instruments that probe deeper into space. Today, the greatest collection of astronomical telescopes ever assembled sites atop Mauna Kea, one of five volcanoes forming Hawaii’s Big Island and the highest point in the central Pacific. In this talk, Dr. Gregory Wirth explains how this remote location came to be home to the CFHT, Gemini, Subaru, and Keck telescopes and how astronomers are using these ... Full Story
Public Star Night, April 20, 2018
The guest speaker for this public star night will be Allison Barto, the program manager for the James Webb Space telescope at Ball Aerospace. Since the invention of the telescope over 400 years ago, humans have been building bigger and more powerful telescopes in a drive to better understand our amazing Universe. With the advent of the space age, we have been able to pursue even clearer images of the night sky through space-based observatories, revolutionizing astronomical knowledge. For ... Full Story
Little Thompson Observatory: March Star Night
The Little Thompson Observatory Bringing science and math down to earth! Public Star Night - Friday, March 17 Doors Open: 7:00 | Guest Speaker: 7:30-8:30 | Observing: 8:30-10:00 The guest speaker is Mike Roos, from Fort Collins, and the title of his presentation is “Messier Marathon in slides”. During the late 1700’s, Charles Messier, a French astronomer and comet hunter, made a list of objects that are NOT comets, so that he wouldn’t have to repeatedly deal ... Full Story
Public Star Night at the Little Thompson Observatory
Friday, January 20, 2017 7:00 – 11:00 PM 850 Spartan Ave at Berthoud High School (park east of the high school; directions are posted on the website, www.starkids.org). The guest speaker is Dr Gordon MacAlpine, and the title of his presentation is “Cosmology with Quasars: Dinosaurs of the Universe”. This will be a public talk and PowerPoint presentation suitable for all ages. Dr MacAlpine will discuss what quasars are, how they were discovered, how they work, and the lingering ... Full Story
November Star Night at the LTO
Friday, November 18, 2016 7:00 – 11:00 PM Public Star Night at the Little Thompson Observatory, 850 Spartan Ave at Berthoud High School (park east of the high school; directions are posted on the website, www.starkids.org). The guest speaker is Scott Kindt, who has been a science teacher at Berthoud High School since 1995, where he is able to use astrophotography as a way to get students interested in Astronomy. Scott Kindt has been taking astro-photos for the past two decades. As a boy, ... Full Story
September Star Night at the LTO
Friday, 16 Sep 2016 from 7:00 – 11:00 PM Public Star Night at the Little Thompson Observatory, 850 Spartan Ave at Berthoud High School (park east of the high school; directions are posted on the website www.starkids.org ) The speaker for this public star night will be Ray Martin from Laramie, Wyoming. The title of his talk will be “Ramblings of an Old Stargeezer” With 60 years plus as both an amateur and professional astronomer there are tales to be told like the time he held the ... Full Story