This week’s frigid temperatures didn’t deter more than 200 people from shuffling in and out of the Challenger Learning Center, where five telescopes were each pointed at a different planet. Everyone was there to learn more about space while also observing a rare celestial event.
Amid a flurry of kids running between activity stations, Amber Kiker’s flight suit and radio headset stand out. She’s the education director at Kenai’s Challenger Learning Center, perhaps best known for its simulated space missions and science workshops. But on this night, she’s helping visitors appreciate the night sky and a planetary alignment.
“It’s special because it doesn’t happen very often,” she said. “And because we’re up here on the north pole – the northern axis – we’ll actually get to see a bonus seventh planet.”
Planetary alignments themselves aren’t that uncommon; what’s special in this case is the number of planets. Kiker says the term “planetary alignment” can be misleading.
“When we say in a line, it's not like what you think of as a straight line, it just means they are within view – within your line of sight,” she said. “Think of it that way. So we'll see Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Neptune and Mercury.”
Visitors were treated to a host of space-themed activities, including solar system necklace-making and constellation charts.
Liam Kelley is a fifth grader at Tustumena Elementary School, and is also Kiker’s son. He uses a piece of fabric pulled taut over a ring to demonstrate how gravity works in space. Kelley sets a heavy object in the center, and spins smaller objects around it. They’re slowly pulled in – toward the heavy object. It’s a gravity well.
Holding the heavy ball in his hand, Kelley explains that the activity reflects how planets and satellites move in our solar system.
“This is our inaccurate replica of the sun,” he said. “The sun is a big thing, and big thing has big gravity.”
After showing how the smaller objects rotate around and toward the heavier one, Kelley removed the heavy ball from the center of the gravity well. The other objects stop moving. A display next to the activity explains that the force of gravity keeps objects in orbit around other objects. When there’s no gravity, there are no orbits.
“But if we remove the big thing, nothing happens,” he said.
The event was also an opportunity for the center to show off its star lab – basically an inflatable planetarium. There was so much interest in the activity the center added showings. Set up in a room all its own, people climbed through an inflatable entryway and sat around a projector that covered the domed space with a presentation about the solar system.
“There was almost certainly water on the red planet long ago,” the narrator says. “Now, only small quantities of underground water remain. It is possible that a simple form of life could persist somewhere below the surface.”
Outside, a line of stargazers stretched from the telescopes to the Challenger Learning center’s front doors. Kiker points to a bright dot in the sky over the Kenai ice hockey rink – Venus.
“It’s the brightest,” she said. “And then if you go a little down – southeast – you’ll have Saturn with the rings, but it hovers around the horizon, so you only get Saturn for a couple of hours.”
According to NASA, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will all be visible throughout February. Venus, Mars and Jupiter will be the brightest. And Kenai Peninsula College is hosting a free stargazing event next Thursday.
