See Ya later, Bradley
This weekend I ran my last open house. It’s kind of sad, I’m going to miss this place. The talk was on the Bethlehem star and was given by Dr. Ed Albin. I however did not get to listen to it because I was helping set up the telescope. We looked at Jupiter and could even see some of its moons. There wasn’t a whole lot of people who attended but attendance for our December events is usually low. Maybe I will come back and watch a lecture as a visitor sometime.
Artifact: Bradley Hill – This artifact is to demonstrate the communication and leadership skills I gained working here. This has prepared me for professional life. No matter what the job is I can use these skills. I tend to be pretty shy so I’m really glad I was able to improve my communication skills.
Working at Bradley Observatory
I am the Open House Coordinator for Bradley Observatory here at Agnes Scott. The open houses are a kind of our reach program we have where once a month we host a lecture, a planetarium show and open up our Beck telescope. My duties as open house coordinator are to contact speakers, print bulletins and sent out information to the campus newsletter and our mailing list and of course work the night of the open house. Friday April 12th, we hosted one of our open houses. Our speaker was Meghan Franklin and she was talking about climate change. I enjoy my job because I love outreach work. Science is something that brings sparks to my life and I want to share that with others. Even though I’m not the best at talking to people I like being able to see them light up and get excited about science. It really makes me happy when I see parents walking around with their kids teaching them about space. But the open houses aren’t just for kids they are really for all ages. We can have four generations in one room all united in their eagerness to learn about science. Science outreach is particularly important for women and low-income persons. Science fields are often pretty heavily male dominated. We need to get more young women interested in science because they need to know that they can be scientists too and to bring some gender equality into science fields. I think the open houses help this by hosting lectures by women in science on the campus of a historic women’s college. Low-income people often don’t have access to technology that aids in science learning. Fortunately, our open houses are free to the public so any one can learn. I think looking to the future we can make the events at the observatory more accessible. Some students have already looked into braille diagrams and signs for the blind and making the planetarium more suitable for people with sensory issues. I think for the future we should look into having have live talk to text application running to create real time closed captions for the hard of hearing and deaf during lectures or maybe hire signing apprentices. I think it would also be good to have a picture of the beck and whatever is being observed shown downstairs for people who are in wheelchairs or can’t walk up the staircase. Science is very cool, and everyone deserves the opportunity to learn more about it.
Artifact: Telescope – I chose this image of the Beck Telescope to be one of my artifacts. It demonstrates the Telescope operating skills I learned from working at the observatory. I also gained communication and leadership skills from this experience. This has prepared me to hopefully work at other observatories in the future especially if they host educational tours.
“Other Worlds in Science and Fiction”
This past Friday I attended an Open House at Bradley Observatory. The topic was “Other Worlds in Science and Fiction.” I expected this talk to be more or less about extra-terrestrial life and comparing our search for extra-terrestrial life to how extra-terrestrial life is portrayed in science fiction. It was more comparing actual space bodies to how they are portrayed in media while going through some history on these celestial bodies. I actually work at the observatory and one thing that stood out was this was one of our bigger turnouts. I think that so many came because the topic was just a great outreach topic. It’s something that all ages enjoy and it’s not super difficult to understand. The children will enjoy it just as much as the adults. It’s also something that everyone can get interested in because everyone has their own favorite science fiction film or novel they want to talk about. I think from this I’ve learned what I can do in my own outreach work. Going forward I need to tailor my work to my audience so that they not only understand it but also enjoy it. if I do this then I can reach new and bigger audiences and get more people interested in science.
