Did you know that 2009 is The International Year Of Astronomy? Well it is!!
In honor of that, the IYA is offering these high quality, low cost telescope kits. One of our local homeschool groups ordered a bulk quantity of these at a lower shipping rate that we were able to take advantage of.
We finally put ours together the other night…(in anticipation of some great star gazing on our trip to a remote island in a few weeks-more on that later!).
My husband showing Jake which direction to assemble one of the many pieces!
The kit comes with three different magnifications. And don’t be surprised when you look through your eye piece and everything is upside down! The FAQ tab explains the reason why!
I would love to say that we went out side and saw the rings of Saturn with these babies…but no. It has been cloudy for days here in Central Ohio, so my kids have been using them to see what our neighbors are having for dinner. But they seem to be working really well!
Jake used the kit directions while we used the following “on-line” directions.
https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/sites/galileoscope.org.gs/files/Galileoscope-Instructions-20090710rtf.pdf
http://unawe.org/joomla/images/materials/instruments/galileoscope.pdf This one is just pictures, but good ones!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1iByPaAG0U This is from You Tube
I felt so much better after hearing on the You Tube video that the model Galileoscope has been assembled and disassembled over 250 times and dropped several times and yet it still works! That means, destructo Ginger’s telescope may actually still be working by the time we go on our trip! She literally dropped and banged the thing 20 times during assembly!
LOL Ginger.
And, um, which neighbors?
we have one! my husband ordered it way back in…february? and eagerly anticipated it’s arrival until JUNE! we haven’t used it much yet, but it sure is neat!
fantastic, I ordered one and sent the link on to some friends (And Ginger is a CUTIE.)
LOL!
What and awesome oppourtunity though, have fun with it on your holiday!
[...] sea turtles, dolphins and many magic school bus episodes on ocean life and water. We built our Galileoscopes and have our sky maps ready. This is all fun, enriching foot work that we often do before a trip to [...]
Very nice! What a good way to get the kids involved in not only assembling the telecope and learning the science behind how it works, but also the science of astronomy itself as they use it. Another project well done!