Students at Glenview elementary school got a closer at the night sky this week without the trouble of staying up until the early morning hours.
Tucked away in a corner of the school's gym on Thursday and Friday was an inflatable planetarium, equipped with a special projector. Once inside, students were given a guided tour of the heavens by Bill Burnyeat of Burnaby-based Canadian Planetariums.
"It depends on their grade level," Burnyeat said Friday during a break between classes. "The kindergartners, they have to know the difference between day and night, for Grade 3 the planets are the focus and for Grades 4 and 5, the weather and the planets as the well, and for Grades 6 and 7, planet identification and things like that.
"And now, First Nations star myths are emphasized in the the curriculum."
As a bonus, and with the help of a remote control that takes the viewer through the sky over the calendar year, Burnyeat gave a sneak preview of a lunar eclipse, in which the moon turns reddish orange as it slides into Earth's shadow.
A real total lunar eclipse is scheduled to start shortly after midnight Tuesday and end about 75 minutes later although the weather conditions for stargazing are predicted to be poor in Prince George at that time.
Burnyeat's overall objective is to give the students the tools to go out and identify the stars, planets and constellations when they look up into the night sky.
"A lot of these things, like star clusters, can be seen with a good pair of binoculars or if you have a camera with a 200 mm lens," Burnyeat said. "Astronomy is something you don't need a big budget for."
Once a reporter for the New Westminster Columbian, a daily newspaper that closed in 1983, Burnyeat has been giving the presentations for about 25 years. Burnyeat has long had a passion for astronomy, although it takes a willingness to stay up late and put up with the cold.
"There's something about being outside and you're really doing it," Burnyeat said. "It's not something you just see on the screen."
When he first began, he relied on 35 mm slides and he now uses pixilated images in which the stars actually flicker. However, the images are not as sharp as they used to be, Burnyeat said, but they're getting better all the time.
While astronomers have learned plenty over the decades, the audiences for Burnyeat's presentations haven't changed - like clockwork, questions about black holes and aliens will come up.
"They're something that doesn't really have an observational component," Burnyeat said. "They get it from cartoons, I guess, or TV."
Burnyeat caters mainly to schools across B.C. and Alberta but has also given presentations to Scouts and Guides and to the occasional birthday party.
- The Prince George Astronomical Society's observatory is open to the public every Friday evening, starting at 7:30 p.m., weather and staffing levels permitting, until the end of April, and is located at 7765 Tedford Rd., off Blackwater Road heading towards West Lake Provincial Park.
For more information, visit pgrasc.org.
