This Saturday, May 2nd, is Astronomy Day. MOSI will be celebrating Astronomy Day and the International Year of Astronomy with astronomy related activities throughout the day and during the evening. The M.A.R.S. Club, our local astronomy club, will be here to answer questions and provide information. We will have astronomy themed demonstrations by MOSI's interactors. You can look at the Sun through MOSI's solar telescopes during the day (weather permitting). Saturn and the Moon will be two of the sights during SkyWatch from 8 to 10 p.m. (weather permitting).

The offerings in The Saunders Planetarium will include the new full-dome show "Two Small Pieces of Glass". Two students attending a local star party learn how the telescope has helped us understand our place in space and how telescopes continue to expand our understanding of the Universe. They learn about the history of the telescope and the discoveries these wonderful tools have made. The students see how telescopes work and how the largest observatories in the world use these instruments to explore the mysteries of the universe. Explore the Galilean Moons, Saturn's rings, and spiral structure of galaxies while learning about the discoveries of Galileo, Huygens, Newton, Hubble and many others. The show includes an interactive tour of our night sky including the current position and phase of the moon and the position of planets currently visible at night.

Hello fellow SkyWatchers:

We are now well into the International Year of Astronomy’s (IYA) world wide celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope to view objects in the night sky. The 100 Hours of Astronomy event runs from Thursday, April 3 through Sunday, April 5. At locations all around the globe, individuals, astronomy clubs, and institutions are setting up telescopes to let the general public view the heavens. Details are at, http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/index.php .

MOSI is participating by holding our SkyWatch event from 8:00 pm until 10:00 pm, Saturday, April 4th. So far, the weather looks very promising.
We will have our telescopes out by the BioWorks Butterfly exhibit, weather permitting. Saturn and the Moon will be prominent.
This event is free and open to the public.

You can get updates on our SkyWatch events, and other astronomical happenings at MOSI through:
1. Emailing me at steven@mosi.org and ask to be placed on my MOSI SkyLights email list.
2. Following my Tweets at http://twitter.com/MOSI_sky_guy
3. Checking out my Blog here.

And, on the evenings of the SkyWatch events, if the weather looks questionable, I update the voice mail outgoing message at 813-987-6338.
This message gives the date and time of the next Skywatch event. If the weather causes cancellation of SkyWatch, I change the message at least one hour before the scheduled start of the SkyWatch to indicate that the event has been cancelled for that evening due to weather.

I look forward to seeing you at MOSI.