On Friday, May 6, Lyme Land Trust Astronomy group members Alan Sheiness, Scott Mallory and Parag Sahasrabudhe went to Camp Claire in Lyme to introduce basic concepts of astronomy to a den of Cub Scouts.

The evening program consisted of three activities:

1. Introduction to instruments used for astronomy: The scouts got to see through an astronomical binocular and two types of telescopes: a refracting telescope and a reflecting Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. They learned how lenses and mirrors are used to focus and magnify the light coming from stars and planets to get bigger and clearer images of these objects.

As it turned out to be a cloudy and rainy evening, the telescopes were trained on far away objects across Hamburg Cove instead of the Moon or stars.

2. With the help of some parents, a peppercorn model of the inner solar system was created at the playground. The scouts got an appreciation of the vast distances and all the empty space between the sun and the planets. They also got to observe the planet Venus in the model using one of the telescopes. If Venus was up in the sky that evening, it would have looked similar to the Venus model seen through the telescope.

3. As the final activity, everyone moved indoors and Alan used a model of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon to demonstrate how the phases of the Moon appear. Each scout then got to be the Earth and saw how the Moon covers the sun when a solar eclipse happens.

The scouts were very interested and engaged in these activities as it was apparent from all the questions they asked. Some scouts mentioned that they own telescopes and Alan invited them to bring their telescopes to the next astronomy group outing and participate in real viewing of astronomical objects.

Alan Sheiness

Lyme

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