The 2003 North Dakota Star Party was our first attempt to host a large star party, we were up for a great challenge. The event went well, but as for the director (Chris Milford) he over did things and needed to chill out for a few weeks afterwards.
The star party managed to get all but one speaker who was asked, Dr. Jerry Brown kicked things off talking about human exploration and tied things in with Lewis and Clark and other exploriers. His talk was followed by Dr. Joe Stickler from Valley City State University who talked about his Medicine Wheel project he involved his students in constructing. The history of native peoples involves a deep connection with the stars, the Medicine Wheel was a calendar which Native American groups across North America used. We had a special awards session where our guest of honor Mr. Jay Brausch recieved an award for promoting astronomy in North Dakota, by his contributions in observing Northern Lights and Sun Spots for the past 20 years. He gave a talk about his classification system and struggles he has been having in keeping his skies. The first night of talks was followed up by what turned out to be the only good night of observing. Dean Smith showed the night sky using a green laser to people who wanted to know what was up and after the short tour we all set forth in enjoying the skies.
Saturday morning came late, ya we are astronomers, we ate breakfast and wittenessed a strange site in the group campgrounds. NSAS member Matt Goltz decided that he wanted to check off another river and jumpped in the Missouri and went for a swim. Apparently he has swam many other rivers where he is from in MN and decided to take another one off his list to swim. He said it was cold, but felt great. Solar telescopes were set up and a new day began.
The afternoon seminars went pretty good we had people participate in the SpaceChicks educational sessons where kids got to take home posters and pictures, try on space suits and have fun with these expert educators. About 15 to 20 people participated in the rocket building and launch that took place, also many people took advantage of the beginners and advanced seminars on astronomy. Chris Milford and Jennifer Rogers took off for the Bismarck Airport to pick up our workshop speaker, Jordan Raddock.
When the three returned it was about time to sit down and enjoy a seminar on meteorites put on by Dr. Mike Gaffey, he shared with the group how to ID meteorites and talked about the importance of these rocks from space. After Mike's seminar we all went off to eat dinner. The North Dakota Jaycee's came to the center of the state and helped put on a great steak dinner. The dinner costs went to a great project called Universal Playgrounds where the Jaycees were going to put handicapped accessable playground equipment in older playgrounds so that all kids can have fun being kids reguardless of any handicaps.
Our speakers for the evening included StarDust educator and Solar System Educator, Adair Teller who talked about the StarDust mission to Comet Wild 2 and its mission to return pieces of comet dust. This mission thus far this year has gone flawlessly and the little spacecraft is on its way back home again with tons of dust. The solar system theme continued with Heidi Manning from Moorhead State University who is on the Cassini spacecraft team. Cassini is on its way to Saturn where it will spend time orbiting the ringed planet, it also has radar and a probe that will spend substancial time looking at the moon Titan. This moon is interesting because it has a dense atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, the possibably for organic matter is high enough for scientists to look seriously at this object.
Dr. Mike Gaffey gave a second talk on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendeviou mission that he was a investagator on. Linking his afternoon sesson to the mission that successfully landed a satellite on a Near Earth Asteroid gave people the impression of what these objects are like and the potential risk they pose to Earth. The last talk of the evening was Dr. Tim Young who talked about Supernovae. Dr. Young's speciality is in simulating stars before they explode and following the brightness and spectra of the supernova as it cools and expands. By doing this we can understand the mechanism that causes the explosion in the first place and the elements that are created out of the explosion as it cools.
This night was cloudy so we all sat around the campfire and chatted into the early morning when we went to sleep. The day was busy and hectic but we still had one more major event to conduct the following and last morning.
Mr. Jordan Raddock from the Sloan Sky Survey came to North Dakota to introduce astronomers to a new tool they could use in doing research projects. The Skyserver software is free and web accessible interface to the huge volumes of data that the Sloan telescope collected. We all got to get on the computers and work through finding images and data on the Sky server website.
We finally concluded the star party event by having our contests and awards and people fulled out evaluations and we all headed out to clean up our camp sites and head out. The weekend was totally cool and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The idea that was just a dream of one club member came together with the help of his club and assistance from two other clubs, a civic organization, state park officials, and many friends and collogues. The astronomy club met one last time with the park rangers for a followup lunch where we discussed the plans for next years star party. Hopefully it will be much more successful then this years event. We learned that we were able to affect the park in a positive way, we also were able to give bussiness to the hotels and motels and restraunts and tourist sites in the local area. Northern Sky Astronomical Society was very proud of helping everyone out, we learned that the star party was a lot of work but it was a good thing for the state to have and support.
See everyone next year.