About

The Charlie Elliott Chapter has an extensive outreach program for schools, scouts, and other civic groups. The Chapter has been a member of the Night Sky Network, a NASA sponsored outreach program for astronomy clubs, since 2006. Our participating members have been trained by NASA project personnel in educational seminars on subjects related to astronomy and space exploration. We use many hands-on demonstration tool kits, some of them provided by the Night Sky Network, to make astronomical concepts much easier to understand. If you would like us to put on an event for your group, please fill out the form at the NSN website by clicking here, or please contact our outreach program coordinator by email atoutreach@ceastronomy.org Click here to see our current Events Calendar. 

Please note:  Post COVID, our outreach program is generally limited to outdoor activities.

The following is an overview of our two main hands-on activities we use to educate the individuals in your group in astronomy and space exploration.

Observe the Night Sky
In this segment, which is performed at night at a dark observing place, we point out using powerful green lasers various constellations in the night sky visible at the time when the event takes place. We will tell stories about them, some of them are mythological in nature, others are more fact oriented. We than will give the participants an opportunity to see, if the seeing conditions allow us, various night sky objects such as, open and globular star clusters, emission, reflection and planetary nebulas, double stars and other interesting objects as well as the planets visible at the time. We will explain in detail what the object is one is looking at, and answer any questions. When the moon is out and causes too much light pollution for the previous objects, we will observe the moon with its craters, riles and mountains instead.

Observe the Sun
This event takes place at daytime. Preferably in the morning hours when the temperatures are still lower and the atmosphere is still a lot more stable than later in the day. We will let participants observe the Sun in white-light and H-alpha telescopes which are specially built for this purpose and are safe for the eyes. Never try to duplicate this at home with your own scope or binoculars if they are not specially made for this, because this will result in loss of your vision. Participants will see the sun and sunspots in the white light telescope and get a view of the sun in the red H-alpha spectral line emitted by the fusion of hydrogen on the sun. This will allow one to see the structure of the surface of the sun, as well as other structures known as filaments and prominences.