Earth Hour Star Gazing
arun on Mar 31 2008 at 7:04 am | Filed under: family diary | Click here to go HOME | or find out about SUBSCRIBING TO THE PIT |
What did you do for Earth Hour?
We spent ours sitting in a nearby cow paddock looking at the stars.
It was a high tech trip into nature because I took my laptop with a copy of Stellarium on it.
Stellarium is an open source application which I downloaded after an unschooling mum listed it as her favourite resource… and its fast becoming one of mine.
Stellarium allows you to identify stars that you can see from any location on the planet. In addition you can view constellations as lines or art (M’s favourite, the pic right is a snap shot of it), spot planets and more
M finds it reasonably interesting but its really me that is enjoying it. In fact its inspired me to start watching ebay for cheap telescopes (by the way any advice on what to buy for a clueless would be astronomer would be appreciated).
We had an unexpectedly great Earth Hour. I had sort of just planned to get the kids ready for bed and then turn the lights out and maybe read by flashlight myself. Instead, we lit a couple of candles and had a “family jam session” playing drums, noisemakers, singing, and dancing. Our two year old got really into it with a cute little sideways stomp dance of his own invention. We joked that what we reduced in energy use, we made up for with “noise pollution”!
It was really fun
I think we should do it once a month.
Molly