Exoplanet satellite V.I.S.I.O.N.

We all say: We miss you Miss Malena. We hope all is great in San Antonio!

Justin G says:
Today Ian,Dr. Mike,Devon,and I Justin built part of our satellite. But Ian and Devon were not there to take the picture. Miss Jennifer was. This satatell is going to new worlds. The mission is called V.I.S.I.O.N.! Astronomy is the best. Dr. Mike is awesome. Astronomy is also the bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

V alley Center
I n
S earch of
I nterstellar
O ther
N ew worlds


Dr. Mikes says:
We haven't decided on what star/exoplanet system we are going to investigate yet. Maybe some info from the Kepler mission will assist us. Mission command center has informed us that we are still on schedule. That spacecraft looks a lot like duct tape over a foam roller with parts from a printer we had fun disassembling. We are not responsible for launch of this vehicle as we only meet approximately 1x/week. Maybe we can get kids from another community center to work on this.
In the picture you see Justin and Jennifer our Americorp leader

Ian and Devon had to leave early but contributed to the early stages of construction of our spacecraft.
Devon and Ian will add more over the next 2 weeks.

March 11, 2009 Paper Luna Collapses

Stellar Nursery Jr. astronomers present: Ian, Justin, Rodney and newcomer Devin. In spite of the wonderful aroma of approximately 450 pound of Corned Beef cooking in the kitchen of the Valley CC in preparation for the Valley's 16th Annual "Old Neighborhood" St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, March 14th in the 1st Ward of Buffalo we did however find the intestinal fortitude to continue to work on our paper mache moon globes for the first hour. Unfortunately 1 or 2 moon globes experienced some rather significant plate tectonics due to the weight of a layer of fresh paper mache pulp. They may resemble asteroids instead.
The second hour we resumed our discussion of our exoplanet mission and continued to disassemble more parts for our spacecraft from our electronic device "graveyard". It looks like we'll be ready next week to begin some construction. To date I believe there are to be infrared, X-ray, visible light imaging devices, lasers, power supplies(ion emitters?), communication devices, etc... Miss Malena did again try to help me with my "astronomy in Spanish" lesson.

This Italian may just forgo the Spanish lesson and may just be Irish for a day or 2 this weekend-- Éirinn go brách!

March 4, 2009 Finally a Clear Night at the Valley

It was our first time out at the Valley with the telescopes in months. The night sky was wonderfully clear and crisp around 22 degrees out. I think Ian, Justin and lasted about 20 minutes. We did get to see a beautiful crescent Venus, M42 in Orion, and the favorite was the moon which beautifully highlighted the craters of our paper moon project-Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel which appeared on the the LPOD on January 26, 2009. Montes Apenninus were equally as striking in our telescopes. The skies were a bit too illuminated for us to locate Comet Lulin however. Hopefully we'll get out again next Wednesday.

February 18, 2009 Wednesday Night at the Valley- Exoplanet Mission

February 18, 2008
Well another cloudy cold night at the Valley and it seems like Fall was the last time we had the scopes outside and no opportunity to even see comet Lulin with the bino's. Unfortunately Justin was not able to be here tonight. Not much astronomy took place tonight but we all did have fun disassembling an old printer of mine for parts that we will use to build our spacecraft that is on a mission to visit and study a distant star with an associated exoplanet system. We all were quite surprised as to the amount of parts in a relatively small inexpensive printer.
We're going to narrow our search by first researching our potential destination on the NASA website "Planet Quest-Exoplanet Exploration" http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_index.cfm.
Hopefully enough parts to get us to epsilon eridani/epsilon eridani b- a meager 10.4 ly away.

January 26, 2009

We we're lucky to get our mosaic of our "Paper Moon" project published on the Lunar Photo of the Day (LPOD- http://lpod.wikispaces.com/January+26%2C+2009 )

Justin and Ian did a fantastic job with our lunar paper mache model of the craters in the region of Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel. We will be using these same techniques for our lunar globes that we started about 2-3 weeks ago. Malena and I had fun too and we were quite pleased it appeared on the LPOD. Bill Rogers stopped during our session and loved the project. The kids liked how the angle of the flash from the camera enhanced the detail of the craters.