Outreach Links

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• Outreach Calendar
• 2005 Physics & Astronomy Open House Images
• 2004 Astronomy at the State Fair Images

Physics and Astronomy Open House

The Astronomy Department provides a number of outreach activities to support public understanding of astronomy and science. Each fall the Physics Department and the Astronomy Departments at Indiana University jointly sponsor Physics-Astronomy Open House. Activities take place all day on this Saturday event, including laboratory demonstrations, lectures, telescope tours, and viewing of the sun, sunspots, and prominences using the Solar Telescope at Kirkwood Observatory. Physics-Astronomy Open House is geared mainly to middle school and high school students, but all ages find the activities useful and interesting.

Kirkwood Observatory Open House

The 12-inch refracting telescope of the Kirkwood Observatory is conveniently located on campus in Bloomington. Kirkwood Observatory is open for viewing most clear Wednesday evenings. Due to common winter inclement weather these Kirkwood Open Houses do not take place between Thanksgiving break and Spring Vacation. These events are manned by students, and therefore, also do not take place on Wednesday's when classes are not in session (such as between spring and summer semesters, etc.). No reservations are required.

The Brooklyn site of Indiana University's Goethe Link Observatory is home to a 36-inch telescope that is operated jointly by [Indiana Astronomical Society] (IAS) and the Astronomy Department. The IAS occasionally hosts small groups of visitors at this facility.

StarTrak is a monthly astronomy column written by Hal Kibbey (IU Office of Communications and Marketing), in consultation with the IU Astronomy Department. These popular articles which appear in numerous publications describe upcoming events in the sky. StarTrak is also available in Spanish.