Campagne d'astronomie
The Camp d'été d'astronomie is a yearly week-long event to practice and experiment with astronomy. Since 2017, I have been teaching a class of adults who had already practiced astronomy and wanted to learn more. The program I taught was centered on experimental projects such as measuring the mass of Jupiter, the distance to Mars, or the composition of a star.
2020
Participants learned about- How to align telescope optics
- How to clean a telescope mirror
- How to use Stellarium
- How to polar align an equatorial mount
- How to safely observe the Sun
- Kepler's third law
- Celestial mechanics
2019
The participants did five "labs" over the course of the week:- Weighing Jupiter
- Measuring the size of Saturn's rings
- Measuring the magnitude of a variable star
- Pen and paper Messier marathon
- Spectroscopy of various lamps (the weather was bad one night)
- Telescope maintenance
- How to use Stellarium
- Celestial mechanics
- Stellar physics
2018
The abriged schedule is here. Three experimental projects were implemented by groups of three or four people :- Measuring the distance to Mars
- Sorting stars based on their composition
- Drawing the objects in the sky with pencil and paper
2017
Participants practiced using telescopes and learned about- Galaxies and the Hubble tuning fork
- Stellar evolution
- Celestial coordinates